How to Make a Duck Tape Holiday Bow

Duck Tape–such wonderful stuff! You can make just about anything from it! How about making some all weather, fade resistant holiday bows this year to use in your decorating outside!

The kind folks at Walmart and Duck Tape sent me a big box of holiday colored Duck Tape and asked me to make something fun for the holidays.

In the box was a great assortment of Duck Tape: gold, silver (chrome), white, gold glitter, red glitter, silver glitter, green and red. The glitter is especially awesome, as it’s “flake” proof–so when you use it you don’t wind up with glitter all over yourself and your home! I have some ideas of how to put that to good use later.

For the Duck Tape Holiday Bows I decided to stick with the solid colors–red, gold and silver (Chrome). All you need for this project is Duck Tape in your chosen color, scissors, and some time!

To make the bows you will have to start out by making some “Duck Tape Fabric”. Basically this is layering the tape to create a solid surface with the colored portions of the tape facing out and the sticky sides in.

1. Place two strips of tape on your table a little longer than your desired completed length, overlapping them by about a 1/4 inch.

2. Now add another strip sticky side down, lining up with the bottom edge of the fabric.

3. Cover the final sticky portion with another piece of tape.

4. Trim the ends off to make the fabric even.

Now on to the bow itself.

5. Create four strips of fabric. The longest is 23 inches long, the second longest is 16 inches long, the final two pieces are both 13 inches long.

6. If you have any of the sticky edges of your tape showing, use your fingers to gently roll it and stick it down to the other side of your fabric.

7. On the two 13 inch pieces cut out a triangle to form the decorative “tail” of the bow.

8. At the top of the tail pieces, you will see a slightly thicker area running the length of the strip. This is where the tape is overlapping for that 1/4 of an inch.

9. Fold the top of the tail accordion style on each side under the center strip and then tape it closed with a small piece of tape.

10. Fold your two remain pieces of fabric into loops and secure with tape.

11. Pull off a 5 or 6 inch section of tape from the roll. Tear in lengthwise to make a thin strip of tape. Pinch both of the loops in the center to form bow shapes and layer them on top of each other, then use the narrow strip of tape to secure them together around the center, pinched area.

12. Flip the bow over and tape on your two tails.

That’s it! It’s easy and inexpensive to whip up several of these bows for all your Christmas decorating needs.