Friday, August 10, 2012

Packing Tape Sculptures

Materials:
- Packing Tape
- Saran Wrap
- Models/ Forms

This is something I've aways wanted to try. We had one an awkward end to the year as far as timing went. With about 8 - 10 class days left, I thought this would be a good time to try out these sculptures.

Because this was a little on the "unplanned" side, I had the students opt to work by themselves or as a group and to sculpt a person or a prop. With my students being conveniently forgetful to ever bringing in objects to wrap, everyone chose to wrap a friend.

Basically we wrapped with saran wrap first (to save on packing tape), and then wrapped with packing tape. I know some people wrap only with packing tape sticky side out first, and then sticky side down. When everything is nicely wrapped, just cut a seam down whatever was just wrapped and tape back shut.




A lot of our sculptures turned out pretty deflated. I was so worried about running out of that expensive tape! After having done this now, though, I know that you need a solid three or four layers of tape, the saran wrap is just too flimsy to really hold up.




It's neat because you can even fill or stuff your sculptures!


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4 comments:

  1. Took me a second to find it but when I did I went WOW! How cool is that?! Thanks for sharing! :)

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  2. how many rolls do you go thru for one sculpture

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    1. eep... I'm not sure, I didn't really keep count because so many students were working at once and everyone was doing different sculptures : x. I DO know that we used less than I anticipated- I have a whole box left over. If I had to guess- I'd say a human figure used about 3. BUT... I didn't like how flimsy ours turned out (I was so nervous I was going to run out!), so I think a solid 5 rolls would make them a lot more firm and successful. Hope this helps!

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  3. That’s a great project! And looking at the finished product, no one will believe that this was made with simple materials such as packing tape and plastic wraps. I wonder what it will look like if you use other tape colors?

    Lauren Woods @ Adhesive Tapes

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