How To Make A Duct Tape Wallet

With the holidays around the corner, now is the time to start thinking about Christmas gifts. The thing I love most about a handmade gift is how personal it is when its custom made for a particular person. While I’m on the subject of personal items, the question must be asked what is a personal item? Well for me, the three things I never leave home without are my keys, cellphone, and wallet. I thought it might be fun to make a duct tape wallet since there so popular these days.

Supplies for a duct tape wallet.

duct tape
exacto knife or rotary blade
scissors and ruler
cutting surface
piece of 3×4 clear plastic

I started by laying out 24 inch strips of tape on my cutting board. I have used a rotary blade and straight edge to make this process a lot faster, but an exacto knife will do just fine. I cut these strips down to a bunch of 8 inch strips. These pieces will be stuck together to make panels and parts for the wallet. For mine I want two different contrasting colors. So I will be making the panels purple on one side and black on the other.

Start with one piece sticky side up, and lay down another piece about halfway so the pieces overlap on both sides. Now that your panel is started, flip it over and keep adding new pieces of tape untill you have one large panel.

Ok below is my panel, black on one side and purple on the other. This panel needs to be cut into 1 inch wide strips to make the first part of the wallet.

Pretty much every single wallet I’ve done is a little different and there’s no wrong way of doing it. This is going to be a woman’s wallet so I want it to open like a check book.

Weave the strips together to make a checker pattern. As you can see below I used a piece of tape to hold the strips in place while I made the pattern. I originally had it 8×8, but I eventually cut it down to 7×7 because it folds more like a book with a spine.

When the pattern is complete, cover the entire thing with tape. Now when you flip it over and trim the sides, there will be a nice checker pattern on the other side. This is the first piece of the wallet.

Making pockets for your duct tape wallet

This will require making more panels out of tape and cutting them to size to fit the checkered backing. Below are steps I took to make a pocket for bills.

I like to have pockets for my credit cards and some extra secret pockets to hold bills and receipts. I used a small 3×4 piece of clear plastic and taped it in to serve as a window for my ID card. As you can see I used small strips of contrasting color as trim on the pockets. This will make the pockets more noticeable and keeps the sticky off your cards.

When you have constructed your pockets how you want, they will need to be taped into the wallet. Arrange the pockets carefully so the wallet still folds together and the pockets are facing in. keep in mind you don’t want credit cards flying out the side when it’s folded.

I put a tape border around the entire wallet to hold everything together and re-enforced the spine of the wallet so it folds like a book. I made this particular wallet for my niece, so I used a letter set to make her name on the inside. <3