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Sunday, October 14, 2012

Duct Tape Purse Blue


Start with your rectangle piece of material face down.  Tape the corners to keep it in place.  The material was bought from Stampin' Up!  The duct tape was bought from JoAnn's. 

 Lay two piece of ribbon down and tape over them to keep them in place.  Then find the middle of your fabric and place your first piece of tape.  This will become the bottom of your bag.  Begin placing pieces of tape in the design of your choice.  You will want them to overlap.

 Fold the ribbon back over the tape to get it out of the way.

 Try to overlap the next piece of tape while allowing the ribbon to go from being underneath the tape to above it.  

  The blue flower strip is not duct tape really.  It is very thin, more like clear packing tape.  The white flowers are actually clear and will take on any color you place underneath it. 


Gently lift the material and flip it over.  You can either trim the excess tape by hand with scissors or use a rotary cutting tool and a quilting cutting guide.  The rotary cutter was much easier.  If you use scissors get the Fiskars non-stick scissors.  Anything else gets gooey too fast.  Really you should use those anyways for cutting the tape in the first place.

After you've trimmed the sides.  Place a piece of tape at the tops of the bag to give it a nice edge, then trim the tape.




 So far so good.  Now Fold the bag in half, to take the shape of a bag.  And tape the sides.  It is easy to get bubbles as you fold the tape over from one side to the other.  Go slow. 
 
 Sorry I don't have a good picture of this.  Open the bag up.

 Your bottom corners will look like this after you open it up.  Take the very tip and begin to push it into the inside of the bag. 


 



 Flatten out the corner on the inside of the bag, along the bottom of the bag.  It will look like this when you are done. Blue is the side of the bag and white is the bottom.

Run a strip of tape all along the sides and bottom for extra strength and to hold the corner piece down.
 


 Tie the ribbon ends and you are done.

 
 One very cute little bag.  To be honest they are still quite thin and not extremely sturdy.  We've considered putting a piece of felt under the tape to see if that will strengthen it at all.  I haven't actually used the purses yet and don't know how much weight they can handle or if they will begin to unravel or wear in a certain area more than others.  If you try it, let me know how it turns out.  I'd love to see your creations. 


Duct Tape Purse Green

On Pinterest I found the idea of a duct tape purse.  I followed this basic TUTORIAL.  Here is a general idea of what we did to alter the basic tutorial. 


Started with a rectangular piece of fabric.  The correct side of the pattern facing down.  That will become the inside of the purse so you want the nice side of the fabric to show.  Cover the back side of the fabric with duct tape in what ever pattern you like.  I started in the middle and worked my way out.  The very middle will become the bottom of the bag. 

Once you lift the fabric up, trim the edges of excess tape.  Tape the sides up.  Then you take the bottom corners and poke them into the inside of the bag.  Flatten them inside the bag and make it sit nicely.  I put a strip of tape along the inside bottom to hold the corners flat and to give a little more strength and shape to the bottom.   The pictures I have on the Duct Tape Purse Blue entry are much better at showing how to do the corner. 


 
This was my first bag and I didn't want to use rope handles covered in tape like the tutorial I followed.  So I wasn't sure how to add straps that would be strong enough to withhold the weight of anything put in the bag. 

  I was afraid the handles would rip off if I only attached them to the sides or top.  I decided to use a continuous piece of ribbon and loop it completely underneath the outside of the bag.  That way any weight in the bag would squarely rest on both pieces of ribbon. 

After putting the two long pieces of ribbon under the bag I retaped over the white areas with more white.  Then just tied the lose ribbon ends at the top.  I like how it turned out.  The next tutorial has better step by step pictures.  I love the fresh bright colors.  If you try your hand at a duct tape purse I would love to see how your creation turns out.  Hope this was helpful.



Duct Tape Purse Leapord

No tutorial on this one.  Just some pictures.  Ended up doing it a bit differently.  It turned out ok but not quite how I thought. 






















Saturday, October 13, 2012

Parking Lot Sight Words

Okay, technically this isn't a "craft".  I've been working lately on teaching manipulative's for my children.  I don't want to start yet another blog so I've decided to post teaching activities I put together on this blog.  This is a long post and somewhat complex.  If you have any questions on what I did, please contact me and I will try to clarify any rough spots. 

Through Pinterest I found the idea of putting sight words on a "parking lot".  You can see the website HERE.  My boys have an awful lot of Hot Wheels cars.  I wanted a parking lot where I could change the words often.  I took some left over poster board I had and drew spaces that would fit the dimensions of their cars.  I put some packing tape down the center of the spaces so I could tape my sight word cards to the poster without ripping the poster when I removed them.

I took 3 x 5 cards and cut them to fit in my parking spaces.  I wrote 1st grade sight words on one side, and 2nd grade sight words on the other.  Then I laminated the cards. 
 
I made 1st grade words blue and 2nd grade words brown.  I began with the 1st grade words.  Once my son went through those to an efficient degree, I began putting the 2nd grade words face up.  After he is able to say a 2nd grade word correctly the first try, I flip it to the 1st grade word as review. 


I sit my son down with this poster and a bag of cars.  I walk away and he spends some time covering all the words he knows with the cars.  (My son has a difficult time staying focused on a homework assingment if I am not right on top of him.  I love that this activity keeps his attention without my help!!!)  

When he has found all the words he knows, he calls me over.  He then removes the cars one by one and has to tell me what each word is.  If he gets it right, we remove the card (or flip it to the other side).  If he gets it wrong, we review the word.  Any words he didn't cover with a car, we practice together.  Those words stay on the board for the next time we play with the parking lot until he is able to say it correctly on his first try.  

I try to have a good mix of easy and difficult words on the board every time.  To keep his motivation high, I make sure there are some words he can remove each time we play.  If we play often, he is able to master and remove difficult words after three or four sessions.  For this to happen it is important we do this everyday or every other day.
 My younger son wanted to use the parking lot as well.  I took some of the playing cards out of our Candy Land game.  They are the perfect size for our parking spaces.  He used the cards to practice naming his colors.  I will soon use this to help him practice numbers and letters. 

 They find this game very motivational because they get to "drive" their cars around the parking lot while looking for a word, or color, they know. 
My first poster was made quickly.  I wanted to see if the activity would really hold my sons attention before I invested a lot of time making a nice poster.  After several weeks of use, I decided to make a more elaborate poster.  This time I used a black poster with white lines (whiteout tape) to represent a parking lot more realistically.   He loved it.  I think the black background gives the white cards and a better focal punch. 


 The first thing I did was to draw the white lines with the whiteout tape.  Next, I covered the entire poster with packing tape to make sure the whiteout lines would not be rubbed off or smeared by the cars and general use.  With the last poster, my double sided tape was on the cards.  When ever I took them off the poster the cards would stick to each other unless I removed the tape.  For this poster I wanted the tape to remain on the poster, not the cards. 

I placed a piece of double sided tape down the center of each parking space.  Then I added another piece of packing tape to cover each end of the double sided tape leaving the middle of the double sided tape uncovered.  This way, when I set a card on a parking space, it sticks to the double sided tape but does not come off the poster when I remove the card.  Eventually these "permanent" piece of tape will wear out.  Then I will need to recover it with another piece of double sided tape and again cover the top and bottom ends of the double sided tape with packing tape to keep it in place.  (I hope that explanation isn't too confusing. 

I used the sight word lists my son's teachers sent home. 

 
I have also decided to keep records of which words he gets right and wrong, and how often.  I began by writing each word down on graph paper and assigning an arbitrary number to each one.  I put that number on the bottom right corner of each card.  (I suppose you could place them alphabetically on the graph and not need the numbers in the bottom corner of the cards to find them on the graph.)  I have written the 1st grade words on the graph in blue (alternating with purple so my eyes don't bug out looking at a sea of blue) to coordinate with the 1st grade cards in blue.  2nd grade graph words are in brown (and blue, again just to make it easier to look at the graph) to coordinate with the 2nd grade cards. 
 
When he says a word, I look at the number on the card and find it on my graph.  I then write a dot if he gets the word wrong and a slash if he gets it right.  Words he didn't attempt do not get marked.  I can then see how long it takes him to master a specific word from the point he begins attempting the word on his own.