My wishy Washi weekend

I’m not sure what it is about me and tape. Remember a few years ago when I went crazy over duct tape? For about a week, I stopped cleaning my home and feeding my family because I was so busy making duct tape handbags.
Well, I had a similar obsession over the weekend with another kind of tape — Washi tape.
When I mention Washi tape, most people ask me what it is. I didn’t know it existed until earlier this year when I started my quest to organize my entire house. I read about Washi tape here, and I immediately knew I needed some! I used the cute colorful tape to organize our paper piles and label containers for our crafting supplies.


Since then, my collection of Washi tape has led a very boring life. I created a cute little container to store it, but it’s just been hanging around with no where to stick. Until last week.
I went to wrap a birthday present and realized I had run out of tape. I remembered my Washi tape (or decorative paper tape, as it’s called at Target) and found a cute pattern to coordinate with my wrapping paper. That’s when the “”Washi” section of my brain finally went into rapid fire. Where previously I could barely think of one use for Washi tape, suddenly, I couldn’t STOP thinking about ways I could use that patterned paper tape. The crafty part of my brain was stuck on Washi tape!
I made a quick run to Hobby Lobby and Target to pick up a few cheap supplies. I bought a small pad of cute patterned paper, some bins from the $1 aisle at Target, some “chalkboard” cardstock labels, and some composition notebooks that were 94 cents. I came home and started taping. Here are a few of my super simple and fun Washi tape projects from the weekend:
I’ve been needing some little baskets or bins where I can throw miscellaneous objects that I pick up around the house until my kids can put them away. I found these cute bins at Target in three of my kids’ “colors.” (My oldest son seriously doesn’t leave things lying around so I really didn’t need a bin for him.) I added a circle label that I printed out on my computer, some Washi tape and boom! That project took about two minutes.


My next project was to create some labels for some areas I had already organized for summer. A few weeks ago, I created this storage system in our garage so the kids could put away our larger than life collection of balls, sidewalk chalk and other outdoor toys. (My original circle labels weren’t sticking, so I needed to replace them.)

I simply printed out more circle labels, attached them to the cute card stock and then added the Washi tape to attach the labels or to add a border to the chalkboard labels.



We have been going to the pool multiple times per week, and it always felt like we were frantically searching for our sunscreen and sunglasses right when it was time to go. So I also had created some storage baskets so we could easily find all of our pool supplies. The baskets still needed some cute labels. Washi tape to the rescue!


I used the Washi tape, cardstock and more labels to make the simplest EVER “thank you” cards…

and to cover my boring composition notebook…

And finally… I decorated an old jar from some spaghetti sauce to create a storage space for… you guessed it!… more tape!! My daughter is a craft-a-holic, just like her mama. She goes through craft projects a mile a minute, so I gave her her own supply of super cute tape. We just needed a place to store her 24 tiny rolls of tape! The jar was the perfect size. It just needed a little bit of taped-0n cuteness.



So, what do you think about Washi tape? Have you ever used it? Does anyone else have a strange urge to create crafts with colorful tape? Please tell me I’m not alone!