Hi there! It’s the 10th today, and I’ve got a new instalment of Inspired by for you! The theme this time is…

Masking Tape

Who doesn’t love washi tape?! The idea for this theme came about a couple of months ago when Riikka sent me a set of beautiful washi tapes on behalf of Tapegarden. Tapegarden (or Teippitarha) is a Finnish online store that offers a wide variety of tapes, stationery and planner goods.

The Japanese masking tapes are by far my favourites. I love both the quality and the designs of these tapes. The first washi tape I acquired in 2009/2010 was a (crazy expensive!) set by Kamoi, and I still have some of these rolls!

As it turns out Kamoi and mt – masking tape is the same thing. On the mt website, it says that Kamoi started out as a fly catch paper manufacturer in 1923. They didn’t start making paper adhesive tape, like sealing tape and industrial masking tape until the 1960s.

The tape we know as washi tape (washi means ‘Japanese paper’) was first created in 2008. Apparently, three women wrote a book that showed creative use of industrial masking tape and that inspired Kamoi to develop colourful masking tape.

My collection

Can you believe washi tape is only 9 years old?

The photo above shows my washi tape in spring 2013. The collection soon grew out of this cute house shelf, and I moved it into a big drawer in my Ikea Moppe unit.

And that’s where it stayed until I thoroughly Marie Kondoed my craft room and donated a massive amount of craft supplies to a local school earlier this year.

I’ve kept only the ones that I love and more importantly that haven’t lost their adhesive power (even after years and years).

I use washi tape all the time, but mostly for gift wrapping, to hang things or to temporarily stick something down. Sometimes a stray piece of tape shows up in an art journal spread, but it honestly isn’t the first thing I grab when it comes to art journaling.

I am however not afraid to use up an entire roll on something silly like masking off my Gelli plate.

The project

When it came down to creating with washi tape, several ideas came to mind, and none of them seemed right. I’m unfortunately stuck in a major creative rut, and I feel terribly recalcitrant every time I *have* to create something. Even if it’s for Inspired by!

I know you can’t tell, but it took me ages to come up with this idea. And then I had the idea (of a hand-lettered and washi tape embellished quote), but could not come up with a text to write. Everything seemed so mundane and meaningless!

So I decided to make it as low key as possible. I grabbed grid paper from my Filofax planner to write on, and I just took text from the back of a magazine:

At least this line isn’t meaningless! (Translation: ‘Climate suffers under cheap meat’)

Then I took a news headline (Translation: ‘Now it’s upon the political groups’) and I hand-lettered that:

Conclusion

I really, really love the way the washi tape borders turned out. It was a bit of a faff, the cutting of the tape, but I think it was worth it. Even for a creative exercise like this! I also practised my hand-lettering, which was awesome. Let’s not waste any more words on my creative rut. I hope it blows over soon!

Check out what Riikka has made this month on her blog Paperiliitin. I can’t wait to see!

Take care and have a wonderful week!

Please note that though I received masking tape from Tapegarden, most of the tape shown was bought by me over the years and I will not benefit from any sales generated by the links!

Inspired by is a blog series by my friend Riikka and I. We decide on a theme (and that theme can be anything from a film, a book, a painting, to an item, colour scheme or material), and then we create something with that theme or thing in mind.

We keep what we’re making a secret until reveal day on the 10th when we show you and each other our creations.