My dad loves duct tape.

And who doesn’t, really?  The stuff is genius.  At the community theatre I was devoted to for years, it was a running joke that our sets were held together with duct tape (a joke that at times became reality, which made it even funnier).  Have you seen that scholarship contest for kids who make their prom clothes out of duct tape?  No, I’m not kidding.  Look at this.  

Look at it, really.  Are you looking?  Because you’ll be amazed.  And you’ll get sucked right in.  Anyway, duct tape is cool.  (and those clothes make this present for my dad look pretty pathetic.)

Nonetheless, here it is.  The duct tape notebook.  

See, my dad loves duct tape so much, my sister made him a duct tape wallet for Christmas.  You’ve seen those right?  It’s kind of like this one.  Except hers is pretty amazing with all of these pockets and folds.  He thinks it's pretty much the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Or refrigerators.  Or the automobile.  He doesn’t use anything else - leather?  That's for unimaginative folks.  

So I figured, why not make him a duct tape set?  I started for his birthday (which is a few days before father’s day, by the way) and gave him a duct tape notebook.  It was really easy.

Basically, I took this little notebook, covered it in duct tape, 

made two small strips of duct tape by attaching a few strips to each other and folding them in half (trimming the uneven edges), 

duct taped one strip in a loop on the side of the front cover 

and one strip in a loop on the side of the back cover just below the front one, 

and slid a mini-sized pen in the loops to hold the notebook shut.  

EASY.  And he loves it.  Just so you can get an idea of the level of duct tape love this guy has, when I told him the notebook was for him to take to work and make notes about customers and "to do" items, he looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Oh, no.  This is too nice to take to work!”

OK.

So for Father’s Day (a few days late) I made him a duct tape cell phone case.  He’s very proud of his cell phone.  He got it for his birthday last week from my mom.  This man is over 60 and is just now getting his very first DECENT cell phone.  (He has had those track phones before...) Anyway, he’s always fiddling with it and my mom gave me a gift tip - he’d been asking for a cell phone case.  I decided to round out my dad’s duct tape accessories.

I made the frame work for the case out of shoebox cardboard.  I measured the dimensions of the cell phone and cut a strip of cardboard which I folded into a rectangular shape.  I then cut a strip of cardboard to use as the bottom of the case and taped it inside the larger rectangle.  I taped the ends of the large rectangle together so I ended up with a thin rectangular cardboard box which I covered with duct tape.  And then I ran out of duct tape.  

So I had to get more... which meant the gift was even later than it should have been.

Anyway, I finished by making a strip of tape by folding a short length in half with sticky sides together.  I wound some more tape carefully around this to finish off the edges.  I cut around it with pinking shears to give it some spunk.  Then I duct taped one end to the case.  I twisted three skinny lengths of tape and then braided them together.  I duct taped this braid across the front of the case as a loop - so you can tuck the flap into it and it will hold it in place.

My camera is really on its last leg, and decides when it want to work and when it doesn't, so I don’t have pictures of this process.  But, I promise to get a picture of the finished product ASAP.  I can't wait for my replacement camera to get here...

Duct tape.  It’s not just for wallets anymore.