Are you one of those people who can wrap birthday and Christmas presents expertly, easily perfecting beautifully sharp edges and carefully-tucked folds? Or do you spend hours grappling with crumpled coloured tissue paper, impaling yourself with scissors and desperately trying to find ‘the end’ of the adhesive tape? If you fall into the latter category, don’t worry, help is at hand (quite literally).
Have you tried using double-sided tape? If not, perhaps you should. It’s an incredibly user-friendly, neat and versatile product that has a wide variety of uses – and not just around the home. Double-sided tape comes in a range of lengths, widths and strengths that make it suitable for home and business uses, including building and house improvement. Here’s a guide to how it might work for you:
What is double-sided tape?
Double-sided tape is a ‘pressure-sensitive’ product. This means that it requires a little pressure to create the adhesive bond that makes it form a seal. It’s specifically designed to stick two surfaces tightly together resulting in a neat finish, where the tape is not visible, unlike the ‘normal’, one-sided variety.
The tape is created by adding a thin layer of adhesive to each side of a ‘carrier’, which is a backing material. It comes in rolls of varying lengths for easy application.
Gifts
If you’ve ever looked enviously at the way shops that offer a gift wrapping service are able to achieve such a professional result, don’t worry, double-sided tape will enable you to achieve this look at home. How? The tape allows you accurately and easily line-up even the most delicate of products, like tissue paper, and secure the edges without clumsy, messy adhesive tape being visible.
This is particularly useful when you want wrapped gift-boxes to form part of a classy seasonal window display, or for making decorations to go on show for Christmas, Easter or Halloween.
Double-sided tape is also great to anchoring message cards to presents, bunches of flowers and all manner of other items.
Arts and Crafts
There are innumerable ways to use double-sided tape to create crafts and up-cycle boring essentials like diaries and exercise books into something creative and unique. Here are just a few ideas:
- Transform and customise a cheap notebook by using strips of double-sided tape on its front, and then around the inside edges of the back of the cover, to secure funky material or up-market wrapping paper. An additional strip of tape can then hold its title, perhaps in a co-ordinating or contrasting colour, to identify its use or owner.
- Create a display board for photos, or interesting cards, by using double-sided tape to attach them to a wooden or cork board. For additional interest, why not shape them into a heart or cross shape? And you could always illuminate it by draping with battery-powered fairy lights.
- Design your own fridge decorations by buying cheap magnets and attaching whatever you like to them – bottle tops, ‘scrabble’ letters, colourful buttons –with double-sided tape.
- Having a party? Cut strips of coloured, thick paper into 20cm strips and use double-sided tape to fashion them into interlocking chains that can be hung across ceilings or hallways. Having a Hawaiian themed event? Double-sided tape is a super-easy way to fashion scrunched up tissue ‘flowers’ that can be threaded onto coloured string to create leis, which can then be offered guests as they arrive.
Commercial and Domestic
Many businesses, schools and colleges find double-sided tape absolutely indispensable and it also has many uses around the home.
- Some types of double-sided tape can be used to create a tight and reusable seal at the top of plastic bags, making them instantly ready for the freezer or picnic bench. Say goodbye to fiddly wire ties and clips.
- Heavy-duty double-sided tape is an essential for carpet laying. It’s also great for keeping mats and securing rugs in place. This, in turn, can reduce accidents – especially if you have elderly relatives or small children.
- Garages and repair shops use strong double-sided tape to secure car numberplates and other signage onto vehicles.
- Some types of open-weave double-sided tape, with filled rubber resin adhesives, are invaluable for creating 3D-type signs and assembling and displaying ‘dummy packs’ of all manner on products.
With so many different product types, a wide variety of uses and such great versatility, double-sided tape is an item that no home or business should be without.