Lame Duck-O

I never thought I’d be without computer acsess as long as this.

I never thought it would be this hard. (my less than stellar texting skills should had been my first clue.

Maybe I should give it up. Maybe I am the only one who cares.

Maybe I should put aside the promises, the hopes of someday, stop stringing everyone along–dragging a length of duct tape behind me like some pathetic bait, like some pathetic piper desperate for the attention of his adoring fans. Like some pathetic duct tape iPhone posting has been before she even started.

But then, maybe just maybe, there’s a duct tape warrior in me. Maybe it doesn’t matter about YouTube or blogs or good editing, or promises or deadlines or adoring fans or any of the rest.

Maybe, just maybe, the smell of the tape as or comes off the role is just enough. Maybe, just maybe, making amazing costumes and lunch bags and belts and all the rest is all I really need.

Just in case, though, just I case you care, I’ll go ahead and keep plugging away on my iPhone and pulling my tape so you can be a duct-tape warrior, too.

(I have a pic I’ll have my satellite duck-o post tomorrow eve. In the meantime, happy pulling, duck-os, and ignore the typ-os!)

How to Make a Duct Tape Can Cover

Level: Die-hard Duck-o

This project is obviously not for the true casual taper but the truly obsessed! This all started back when I was in Juneau, new to a fantabulous apartment with a terrific kitchen layout with only one major flaw: not nearly the cupboard space a gal like me needed to properly store food for seven! So, because I am just that cool, I decided to cover my cans with duct tape ‘cozies’ so that I wouldn’t be embarrassed when my friends came over for classes. Of course, by then my duct tape and supplies had totally taken over my kitchen and my food got relocated to my bedroom, so it turned out to be a moot point. So why am I now making them again, even though I have a studi-o and no good excuse, you ask? Because I can, that’s why.

Okay, so I have full intentions of doing enough of these to completely fill my cupboard, but I’m going to start with a #10 can size tomato sauce. Mostly because its big, and therefore I can add some fun detail, like my initials as a logo, for example.

Lay out 5 strips of red, long enough to go around the circumference of your can. To figure that, I carefully ripped my label off my can and added a few inches. Finish size for my can was 20″ so I pulled my strips at about 24″.

Next, mark out and draw your label. Keep in mind that only about 7″ is actually visible at any given time, so make sure you stay well within that as you sketch it out. I used a pineapple can to give me the basic size and shape for my tomato, then flattened it a tad and added a basic stem. I was extra careful about the background label shape as I knew that would be the first thing to cut out. Not too much detail; all of this will be redrawn as the layers are completed.

Now cut out the background for the logo, but hold onto the red cut-out for future reference. I ended up with a total of 3 layers on my logo: gray, white, and tan, with tan as my background color.

Fill in the rest of your details , this time the way you actually want it to look. There is a more precise, and therefore more professional looking, method you can use, but it requires a printer and a computer, of which I have neither. I will show that technique in a future post when I have the tools to do a YouTube videos again. Maybe for Halloween costumes or some other such awesome project.

Meanwhile, back to the project at hand, cut out and back the tomato. Don’t cut out the stem, though. I backed it with dark brown because, oh yeah, my label is red and so is my tomato! You also need to cut ‘phase 1′ of the lettering; begin with the very outside lines.

Continue working on the details, working from the outside in, redrawing lines as needed, until complete.

Cut label at 20″. Peel up from the mat and add magnets on all 4 corners. Cover back with gray and front with clear to protect your hard work. Wrap label around can, add you scraps to duck-o ball and you done.

Happy obsessing Duck-os!

How to Make a Duct Tape Camp Chair

Did I say in the last blog post, I would blog the instructions for this chair tomorrow? Well “tomorrow” is a loose term that can be interpreted in some cultures as “next week”! Sure, why not.

OK, here we go. The pictures that I am going to show are for the toddler sized chair, but the same steps work for the child and adult sizes, too. I chose to showcase the toddler’s chair because I wanted to color code the pipe lengths, and lets face it; toddlers are adorable in rainbow!

For all of the chairs you will need PVC joint cement — unless you like sitting on the floor. All the fittings and pipes are 3/4″. Either a PVC pipe cutter or a mini hack saw work well to cut the pipe. You will need 3 sticks of standard 80″ pipe for the Adult and Child Sizes, and 2 sticks for the Toddler Size.

For the Toddler Size you will need:

8 – 90′s

8 – Tees

4 – 4″ pipes (Orange)

4 – 4 1/2″ pipes (Green)

2 – 6″ pipes (Purple)

4 – 6 1/2″ pipes (Yellow)

2 – 10″ (Red)

4 – 11″ (Blue)

For the Child Size you will need:

8 – 90′s

8 – Tees

4 – 4″ (Orange)

4 – 6″ (Green)

2 – 9″ (Purple)

4 – 9 1/2″ (Yellow)

2 – 13″ (Red)

4 – 14″ (Blue)

For the Adult Size you will need:

8 – 90′s

8 – Tees

4 – 4 1/2″ pipes (Orange)

4 – 7 1/2″ pipes (Green)

2- 12 1/2″ pipes (Purple)

4 – 11 1/2″ pipes (Yellow)

2 – 16″ pipes (Red)

4 – 18″ pipes (Blue)

Take each length of pipe and cover it in the color of your choice by ripping 2 strips of tape 2″ shorter then the pipe. Center and cover.

Next, put all of the pipes together. I don’t really know a good way to explain it, so just match the colors and the lengths of pipe with the picture.

Next, cover the seat. Because I want to be able to fold the chair, I wrapped a piece of plain gray sticky side up all of the way around the blue pipe, sticking it to itself tightly in a loop. Then, cover the loop with another layer of gray sticky sides together. The loop should move freely around the pipe. After the whole seat is covered, reinforce the back blue pipe loop with several (2, 4, or 6 depending on your size) 6″ strips of gray so that it won’t rip when you sit on it!

Next, wrap gray tape around the seat cross wise for added stability. Cover the entire seat once, sticking it right on top of your existing layer.

Now wrap the back of the chair around the purple pipes, but this time you can wrap sticky sides together. Then repeat going cross wise.

Now cover the back and seat with a design of your choice or, just leave gray for that extra special duct tape look.

Remove the front blue pipe (the once holding the seat in the front) and the bottom blue pipe pipe and set aside. Glue all of the 90 joints to the pipes with PVC joint cement.

Fold one orange and one yellow pipe to the front and one orange and one yellow pipe to the back. Throw the chair — along with your tent and sleeping bag — in the back of your vehicle and head to your favorite campsite. Set up your tent and build a fire. Replace the two blue pipes in your chair insuring that the joints are snug and secure. Pull out a bag of marshmallows, add your scraps to your duck-o ball and you are done!

**Disclaimer: All sizes of chairs HAVE NOT been extensively tested. Artduck-o DOES NOT guarantee the safety of these chairs although no significant problems have occurred with the current design. For maximum stability glue all joints and test the strength of tape.**

Happy camping Duck-os!

Duct Tape Camp Chair Sneak Peek

So I finished the chair, finally! Yay. Actually, this was the second chair I made. The first I took with me camping but there were a few problems with it, such as, random collapsing. I’m pretty sure I’ve fixed the design flaws–at least, I haven’t sat on the floor once today, but time will tell! Unfortunately, though, with all the testing and design work I didn’t have time left to actually blog the instructions. So…I will post them, in detail, tomorrow. In the meantime feel free to oooooo! and aaaaaahhhhh! over the pictures.