Washi Tape: DIY Date

Hey there, friends!  Happy Friday to you!  I hope you all have had a wonderful week and are gearing up for a great weekend.  :-)

So, All Things Luxurious is going to be participating in something pretty fun once a month, and I'm really excited to share it with you!  :-)  My friend Louise from Laid Off Mom was sweet enough to invite me to party with her for her first monthly DIY Date!  She e-mailed me and some other awesome bloggers a couple of weeks ago and told us about how she has a monthly "craft night" with her friends, and how she wanted to do something like it for the blog!  Each month, she will pick a crafting medium, and it's our job to come up with something creative!  Make sure you keep a look-out on her blog for posts like this one where she sets the due date for the craft and the type of craft we're doing so that you can join in, too!

Louise will be posting all of the projects onto a Pinterest board dedicated to that particular craft, her blog, and her Facebook page.  I'll be sure to update these links on Monday when she posts up -- she's sharing all of the projects on the 23rd, but I'm blogging about my craft today.

So.  Washi tape.  I will tell you, I had a painfully difficult time finding this in any craft store, and I have no idea why.  I will tell you about my horror story in another post -- my experience was actually so bad that I am looking to find some independently owned craft-supply stores in the Scottsdale-Phoenix, Arizona area (so if any of you have any tips, let me know!).  I have been keeping an eye out on Etsy and Pick Your Plum  for washi tapes that I like so that I can stock up -- because using it was so much fun (and so easy).

I ended up finding a very small selection at JoAnne's (like, I had two choices), but thankfully I really liked both so I just had to decide which one I liked better.  I debated for a while over what I was going to decorate with the washi tape, but I decided on a white catch-all tray that I thought was pretty and could use a little sprucing.

The washi tape I chose was pretty cute, and it is Martha Stewart brand.

This project is so simple, it really doesn't even need a tutorial.  I just traced straight lines across the bottom of the tray lightly with pencil and a makeshift ruler (a nail file, of all things), and then I began to layer my tape!  I cut the excess tape by lightly slicing with an Exacto knife at the edges -- this worked really well for me!

I really enjoyed making up my pattern as I went along...it was fun!

And there you have it!  When I finished it, my mom already wanted it, so she put it to use in her living room, holding their crazy amount of remotes.  ;-)

I may Mod Podge the bottom if it seems like it's not holding up, but I think it will be okay for now.  :-)  This project ended up taking about 45 minutes, and the cost was $22.  Not bad!

Have you made any projects with washi tape lately?  Where is your go-to place to buy it?

love,

maria

Update: One of my lovely readers, Erin from 110 + 2 told me about a GREAT washi tape website called Cute Tape.  I have been *loving* perusing the site and looking at all of the beeeautiful tape it has to offer!  Make sure you check it out.  :-) And thanks, Erin!

Linking up!