At Briargrove Elementary, We KNOW Tape!

The past few months, while preparing our creature sculptures for the fourth grade art gala, we have used a LOT of tape in the art room. The students and I have become tape experts! We know which brands work best for tape sculpture, and which don't. Here's what we learned:

Col-R-Tone System Masking Tape Class Pack (shown below) from Dick Blick was our favorite! It's pretty expensive, though, so depending on how many students you have it might become very pricey... I would estimate that we used 1.5 packs per class. This was also one of the only brands with brown and orange - very popular colors for creature-building. This tape has a matte finish.

Here are some creatures made only with Col-R-Tone tape.

Duck Brand Duct Tape (shown below) was a hit too! We discovered this one at Michaels Arts and Crafts later in the project. It's easy to tear and has the strongest adhesive. It's not too expensive, and covers large areas easily. We found it in about 12 colors. I think that they also sell it at Walmart. There is a cool silver color that the kids love, too. This tape is glossy and has kind of a plastic finish - just like regular duct tape.

Here are some creatures made only with Duck Brand Duct Tape.

Colored Masking Tape, 8-Roll Assortment (shown below) from Sax Arts and Crafts worked very well, too. There's less variety in colors, though. It's not as expensive, and the rolls come with a little more tape. We used that tape when making our collaborative creatures.

Unfortunately, we had to learn the hard way which ones didn't work well!

The Colored Masking Tape Class Pack (shown below) from Dick Blick does not - I repeat - does not work well for sculpture! The ends do not stay stuck down, nor does it stick very well to the newspaper and clear tape under structure of the creatures. I had ordered a few packs of this to get some variety in color, so when we discovered it wasn't going to work, I found another use for it (see this post on drawing with tape.) This tape is crinkly like crepe paper, thinner than the other brands, and has a matte finish.

When building the creatures, we used regular clear scotch tape. This helped us cut down on waisting the more expensive colored tape. We also found a bit of extra clear packing tape. If you can get some of this it really helps reinforce joints to make a more sturdy creature! Here are some of the creatures before the students added colored tape.
The students and I hope you will try building with tape and let us know how it works for you!