Duct Tape Rose: A MOPS craft review

By far my most popular and re-pinned post of Pinterest is the Easy Duct Tape Rose. I'm a sucker for a good pen craft, so this is at the top of my planning list. 

Today I endeavored to try my hand at crafting pretty flowers out of pens and a roll of duct tape. The main purpose was to figure out how many pens can be made with one roll of tape. It's easier to plan out the costs of crafts when we know how much supplies we actually need. Know what I'm sayin'?

I hope other people have as many "dumb" moments as I do. Sometimes I just forget to think. The original tutorial said to cover the pen in the tape and I was like, "How do I do that? Should I spiral the tape around the pen?" In case anyone else has a dumb moment... and I hope some of you did because stupidity loves company ;-)... You just need to cut/rip a piece of tape slightly larger than the pen and roll it up. Easy peasy, lemon squeezey :-)

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I figured this craft was easy enough that I did not have to read over the instructions before trying it out myself. The result is the bigger rose pictured on the left in the pics. I used 3-4in strips instead of the 1-2in strips mentioned in the original tutorial. The end result is still pretty...just bigger, so it uses a little more tape.

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Speaking of using more tape.... I was able to make 10 duct tape rose pens from one 10y roll of tape. Keep in mind that 9 of these pens were made using more duct tape than is actually required and I had almost enough tape left over to make one more.  In a perfect world you could probably get at least dozen pens per roll if you made them all with the small petals. 

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I found it easiest to make all the petals before I started assembling the rose. This way I could line them up in the order of smallest (inside petals) to largest (outside petals).

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 I was not a big fan of the way the base of my rose looked when I was finished, so I cut a small strip of duct tape to wrap around the flower base. I think it gives it a nice clean finished look.

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I tried making a couple without trimming the point off the petals (like the pen pictured on the left). To each their own, but this is not my favorite look. I definitely prefer the rounded edged petals on my rose pen. 

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My FAVORITE thing about my new Duct Tape Rose Pens...

No one "accidentally" takes my kitchen pen with them to work or school or really anywhere outside of the kitchen. Whoohoo! I love having my pen right where I left it every time I need it :-)