Creative Ways to Use Painters Tape
As you could imagine, being crafty in Donelson, Hermitage, Madison, German Town, Whites Creek and even Midtown can come with a price. Now there are fun ways that people are using a few bucks on painters tape to really bring creativity to their home. So what is so special about painters tape? One of the many reasons painters and home owners use painters tape is because it leaves behind crisp, clean paint edges. This is hard to achieve with any other product, but painters tape aims to please every time. Another great reason people are loving painters tape is that it will not peel away delicate surfaces like wallpaper or trim. Painters tape is extremely easy to tear off the roll without any hassle and sticks on the wall forgivingly, should you need to backtrack.
Although painters are using painters tape for large projects, we found that there are several people who are maximizing the pros of painters tape in other fun ways.
Artwork
Davis Day by Day decided her walls needed a little boost of color. What she achieved was simply genius.
Steps:
First she painted all of the canvases white (since that is the color she wanted the lines to be) and let them dry.
Then she used painters tape and randomly taped off lines. For some lines, she overlapped the pieces of tape for wider lines and for others she just cut the tape in half.
Next (this is the key to getting those crisp lines) she painted over the edges of the tape with white. This way, any paint that seeps through the tape will be white and not green.
Once the white was dry, she put on two coats of green paint.
No-Paint Diamond Wall
The Nester needed a diamond look for their walls to feel alive again. Here are the supplies they needed:
3-4 rolls of Scotch Colors and Patterns Duct Tape
X acto knife
measuring tape
laser level or plumb line (we made our own with a string and something heavy tied to it)
patience
Before they started, she first made a mock-up of how big she wanted the diamonds to be. Diamonds look their best when they are twice as high as they are wide:
I figured a 30 inch tall diamond would be nice so, from the top center of the wall I made a mark on the wall (mark 1) measured down 30 inches and made a mark (mark 2). Then I measured down 15 inches into the center of where the diamond would be (halfway) and then 7.5 inches over to the right (mark 3) and 7.5 inches over to the left (mark 4). I was left with 4 marks on the wall that marked the points of the diamond.
I slapped some tape up just to get a feel for the size and yep, I liked it so I took it down and used those marks as our starting point. From there, we measured and marked 15 inches over and 30 inches up across the entire wall. And by “we” I mean my husband.
After a few short hours, they were finished! Want to see how they made this happen? Watch this video.
[youtube id=”rStMbVu_ZTo”]
Make a Lamp
That’s what Dino Sanchez did when he decided to say to hell with regular old lamp shades.
So how did he come up with this clever design?
Dino explains:
When this opportunity came along the first thing that came to mind was a bundle of layered blue tape. It’s an object that has become synonymous with painting, so I knew I wanted to create something that referred to it.
3M ScotchBlue tape is very accessible and available at any hardware store. Going along with that I wanted to create something just as accessible, simple enough that anyone could make. The goal was to use as few materials and tools possible. It was important that all the pieces could be purchased anywhere ScotchBlue tape could also be purchased.
For any project, the first thing I do is sketch out my ideas. I arrived at creating a light for a couple of reasons. For one, I’ve been obsessing over lighting for the past couple years, so its top of mind and we’re creating a lot of them. Secondly, I wanted to keep focus on the iconic blue of the tape and light seemed like the most direct way to give it life and celebrate it.
In parallel with sketching, I always create models. Lots and lots of models. At first I was looking at creating something entirely out of tape, using pure geometry to hold the form. This ended up being quite time consuming and complex so I started playing around with additional materials.
What I ended up with was a set of lamps constructed solely of ScotchBlue tape, wooden dowels and a corded light source. The only other thing needed is a tool for cutting the dowels.
ScotchBlue tape is quite responsive and holds it’s shape very well. It’s easy to massage the tape into whatever shape you want and make the joints you need. It’s adhesion is really strong, yet it comes off very easily and cleanly. It allows for making mistakes and starting over.
After the structures were complete, I wrapped each of them with tape.
The first lamp is a pentagram structure with three legs, the second, a rectangular box with four legs. The light shining through emphasizes the layers of tape wrapped around the structures. These two shapes represent only a fraction of the possibilities.”
There are so many ways you can use painters tape to your creative advantage. Go nuts and try one of these methods the next time you feel like being a little crafty and going against the grain of traditional painting projects.