Duck Taped Diaper Box

Practical turned pretty.

Well, as pretty as duck tape can get, anyway!

This is how I decided to turn a diaper box into something that looked lovelier and would be useful. No rocket science here. No perfection either.


My inspiration was THIS post over at Western Warmth. She has rescued diaper boxes with both duck tape and fabric, and they look fab!

Nowadays, duck tape does come in some neat and outrageous colors and patterns. I chose the merlot color for two reasons: it was double the yardage (20Y) for the same price as the fancy patterned duck tape (10Y), and the deep rose/pink/burgundy hue is an accent color in the little girl's room in which the box will be used.

It's fairly self explanatory, I think, and the pictures say a lot,

but there are a few things that I learned which I'll share.

Such as, a knife is definitely better than scissors for removing the flaps. I knew this, but felt the need to try the scissors first for some reason anyway.

Handles are tricky. Nor are they pretty.

But, they ended up very reinforced with all the duck tape.

Once it wrinkled, I could not get the wrinkles out.

Not even if I peeled it off and tried the same piece again. 

The handles seemed to better to me, even on the outside, once I finished off the inside.

Hhhhmm.... fuzzy pic. Sorry.

However, I really began to feel better when the box edges came together.

The sides were fun! This is were I really got rolling.

I worked from one end to the other. Simple and easy.

Finishing the ends off around the handles was tricky. I finished if off under and above the handles and then worked from the outside in with the full length strips to the edges of the handles. (The picture below shows the opposite: working in from the outside edges first. I learned the hard way!) Finishing from the middle out and then outside edges in worked better, but is still short of what I'd call beautiful. It simply lent uniformity to the ends by making them similar to the sides. And, thankfully, uniformity did a lot for the feeling of neatness and precision with a project that was a lot less than perfect!

The bottom of the box was then finished off too, in the next two pics. 

I wanted to make sure that no little gummy duck tape ends would roll up if the box was slid along on the floor. I also finished off along the inside upper edge of the box.

At this point, nothing speaks to me quite like the clean, crisp even lines and edges of smoothly adhered duck tape. Sigh...

The inside of the box actually was not completely closed, so I used a piece of the lid to fix that. Also, I knew this box was going to hold something that was heavy and that would hide the bottom anyway, so the extra support was a plus.

A close-up of the imperfect, but greatly reinforced - and don't forget uniform! - handle.

The finished project - yeah!

The consensus?

Patterned duck tape would totally have hidden the seams more.

And probably the imperfections of the handles too.

However, I actually like the pattern of stripes the overlapped tape created.

Taaa-daaah!

A diaper box has been reborn!

I especially like that it holds the big books that wouldn't fit on the bookshelf.

That's been driving me crazy! 

The bonus is that I can get the ill-suited bookshelf out, rearrange a little and make some more progress on the little munchkin's bedroom.

Thanks for sticking around through this one - no pun intended! :-)

Me and my box are partying over at a few lovely blogs:

Metamorphosis Monday

Whatever Goes Wednesday

Thrifty Thursday

Delightfully Inspiring Thursday

Flaunt It Friday

Come visit!