Duct Tape Notebook How-To…

Well, here I am, another night up here at work. Except the big difference here is that I’m actually working the midnight to 8 a.m. shift for once. This is a rare occurance in which I stay up all night drinking coffee and well, doing what I normally do at work, surf the internet like a ho-bag.

Anyhow, I came up with this really great idea after making a wallet out of duct tape the other night for Jess and I was thinking of other things I could us e and make out of duct tape. For instance, once I covered an entire chair with duct tape.

So anyhow, tonight while working the desk I thought I’d put an idea I had earlier in the evening to test: A duct tape notebook.

First thing first: You’re gonna need a big roll of duct tape, paper, and a paper clip. Other supplies that would help are scissors, a knife, a clean flat surface, a ruler and it might be helpful if you have a large paper cutter handy. If you don’t, the scissors will have to do. Just make sure you get your measurements right.

First rule of construction: Measure twice, cut once. It’ll help you out on this project dearly. Now mind you it’s not necessary to be completely accurate when cutting paper, but it does help out a lot when you’re pages line up. Especially when getting rid of excess duct tape around the edges. But we’ll get to that.

So, the first step is to cut the paper. I’d sugges taking an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper, and cut it at 5.5″ so that you keep the width of the paper, but cut the height in half and can use both sides of the paper. Then you take a thin strip of duct tape and wrap one side of the paper in it, acting as a binding. You’ll want to do it longer than the 8.5″ of the paper so that there are still duct tape edges left on the top and bottom you can fold over and use to bind the book further.

At this point, you should turn the book upside down to ensure that no paper falls out of the binding you’ve just sandwiched together. If it does, you’ll need to redo the whole thing, and who wants that? I surely didn’t, which is why I did it right the first time. Make sure the tape wraps around all three sides so that the binding will work.

Now, on to the cover. First off, you’re going to make a large sheet about the size of a standard sheet of printer paper, with about half an inch on each side. As you can see by the picture, I over did mine a little bit. This sheet will act as the cover. After you have it made, line everything up and make marks with a pen to see where you’re edges are and where to cut. This will by far make your life tons easier in the end. Because I made mine a little too large, I had to add a clasp contraption to it in order for it to stay closed completely. However, this option is not necessarily required…

So now that the sheet is cut and laid out, you’ll next need to make a tube out of a strip of duct tape cut in half and roll it in a tube sticky-side-up to connect the binded paper to the cover. This is, of course, after you’ve made the necessary trim cuts needed.

After you attach the cover to the binded paper, now you can make a clasp if you feel like it. First, you can cut a hole on one flap (the back one works the best. In my design, you’ll need to make the back side a little longer than the front.) Take a strip of duct tape about 3-4″ long and wrap it around an unfolded paper clip. When you wrap the strip around the duct tape, ensure there are no sticky places left. Basically, you’re just making this into something that would normally resemble a string. Then take the long end and loop it through the hole, and tape that side up.

After you do this, figure out how long it will stretch so that the back flap will cover be on top of the front flap (where the back flap and the front flap meet, basically) and then take two pieces (one long on top, a shorter one on bottom) and stick it on the front cover to make it stay. (The longer piece shold be the one showing, so the tape can stick to the front, basically.)

And voila! A perfect duct tape notebook. Of course, you can do this really in any size that you choose, with as much paper as you want (you’ll need to figure out the dimensions on your own) and add things like pockets or hidden compartments if you feel the need. You could also, for the purposes of a hardcover, take a cardboard box and cut it to the exact dimensions of your cover and lay that in between, along with some for the binding (this will be duct tape notebook version 2, basically.)

Also, you can decorate the front in order to make it look cooler. I got a little carried away with my cover designs and such.

Enjoy all!