Faux Japanese Tape

(this is a copy of something I wrote last year on a different blog...so the pictures of samples are PRE-new camera...sorry!)


Yesterday I woke up to an email from my sweet niece, Mattie, introducing me to Japanese Masking Tape.  OMG!!!  I fell in love instantly so I spent the next two hours shopping the internet for different colors and things to do with it.  I "spent" almost $200 and didn't have all I wanted....and thankfully, I never pushed the final "pay" button!!!  That's a LOT of masking tape... and I was having a hard time thinking about what *I* would do with it.  There were some cute things but... $200!!!

This time...one of the RARE times, I waited a while before actually buying anything.  Later in the day I thought that printing on clear label paper may work.  It is sticky on one side and I can do ANY color almost instantly.  There are pros and cons but... $200!!!

So, here you go...here are some pictures of actual tape and some of the patterns I came up with...I didn't try to match but they are in the same color families so I'm showing them together...

To get your FREEBIE you can click on my version to enlarge it then right click/save.

Here is an example of one of the problems with the clear label sheet...(sorry for the HORRIBLE picture!)  Below you can see by the bottom grid, it is see thru...so white isn't white unless you put it on white.  So, I put it onto white tape for the top version... fixes the problem, but adds a step.  I kinda like the two together.

One cool thing about the way I laid it out on the paper is that I can cut a strip across the "grain" and get multiple patterns or up and down to get a single pattern.  Examples of both below:

What I did with it: (again, sorry for the bad picture, it's getting dark here)

This is a VERY EASY way to match my envelopes and cards without having to print directly to the envelope!  I probably couldn't do that as easily with tape because the colors wouldn't be exact.  BUT, I will be buying some that I "just HAVE TO HAVE"! :-)

OH! and FYI, I had to eat vegetable soup for lunch so I would have a can to make the pencil holder! ... the sacrifices we make for our art...

Thanks  for the inspiration  Mattie!  I LOVE YOU!

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