We've seen over the last several years incredibly creative work done with tape purchased from our web site. From hula hoops to art installations to window displays customers have used our tape in a myriad of ways. We just saw a new window display one recently posted online so we thought we'd showcase a few of these now.

Monika Grzymala's Distortions 2008 art installation in Vancouver, BC

POST 27 window display in Chicago, IL

Martha Stewart gift wrapping in Blueprint November/December 2007

Martha Stewart halloween decoration in Martha Stewart Living October 2008

We've recently launched a redesign of FindTape.com's home page and page navigational elements. In the top navigational there is now a 'Shop By Category' button which opens up to show an expanded category listing including the first few subcategories belonging to a category. Hopefully this will allow customers to see the full breadth of tapes carried on the site and also allow quicker access to the subcategory level on the site. In the bottom navigation we now show you images and provide links to your most recently viewed products. On the home page another larger keyword search tool is included in addition to the one shown along the top navigation. There is a promotional area on the home page which rotates items we think could be of interest. We also now show product thumbnails for our main categories in case you know what a specific type of tape looks like, but may not be sure what category it lives under. Once you browse it to the site we still provide a left-side navigation bar to allow you to switch between categories and subcategories. In addition a link is provided there to information regarding our partnership with Bongo International Parcel and Mail Forwarding which services our international customers where we do not ship direct. We hope these changes make the site more usable and we'd love to hear your feedback. Thank you.

So my family is always making fun of me for insisting we use adhesive tape to solve every problem, so I decided to actually document what tape I've used over the last couple weeks to see how excessive I've really become.

1. I used some Polyken 510 black gaffers tape to hold the power cord in place on an air compressor. Comes off cleanly and doesn't dry out like rubber bands do.
2. Recently put in a new sliding glass door and it came with a molding piece which was to be put on as finish to the side of one of the doors. I assume it was meant to be glued on (the instructions didn't say), but I used some JVCC DC-UHB40FA-C ultra high bond double-sided tape to mount it (I also used some white gaffers tape to hold it in place while the adhesive bond was setting).
3. On a day-to-day basis the tape I probably use the most is Shurtape JLAR. My 3-year old son is always tearing or ripping something in one of his books and this is great for book repairs. I still have some old rolls left over from when Permacel still made the tape and what I love about it is that they crush-cut the rolls so you could just pull on a length of the tape to break it by hand (no scissors needed). Now that its made by Shurtape is razor-cut like most tape so you can't do that anymore, but hopefully my supply will last a while longer.
4. I've been using 3M EC100 super glue all week to fix ornaments like the purse on this snow-lady. One thing I really like about EC100 is that it doesn't seem to clog up and become unusable after you use it a couple of times like I've had happen with other super glues.
5. I've been using a lot of gaffers tape over the holiday season to hold down cords - here I've used some 4 inch Scapa 225 white gaff to cover a green extension cord on my front door. It's a bit wrinkled since I probably should have gotten some help putting it on (it's a little hard applying wider width gaffers and duct tape alone), but you should get the general idea.
6. 3M 109 double-sided poster tape is great for putting up your kid's artwork on walls since it easily removable. In this case I even used some to hold the 109 dispenser up to the wall so I could take the photo.
7. I'm a big fan of the JVCC GLW tape and use it on electronics all around the house. I'm always a little surprised when I see reviews of glow tape say it's not very bright. It's definitely not a high-powered light source and wouldn't compare in intensity to say a flashlight, but to darkness-adjusted eye it works great to help you find a remote control in the middle of the night in order to turn off the TV you left on. I haven't mastered the art of photographing a glow product in darkness yet so this is just showing the product in daytime light - pretty boring.
8. Besides the Shurtape/Permacel JLAR, double-sided carpet tape is the other type of tape I used the most often probably. Here I've used some Polyken 105C to hold down the mat rug on a landing outside in the garage.
9. I was having an issue with some file drawers I had on some shelving downstairs. When you pulled the drawer completely out it would overhang the shelving and cause the back of the file drawer to pop up and the heavy drawer overhanging the shelving would then pull it off the shelf (not a very good storage system). I used some extra 2 x 4 pieces to brace the Vaultz File Drawers in place, but I first lined it with some JVCC FELT-06 felt tape to make sure it didn't dig in or scratch the drawers.
10. We just got in some of these Caution non-skid cleats from Wooster and figured they would work great on some outside steps I had in the garage. I was going to use the glow-in-the-dark cleats we got in from Wooster instead, but the area I used them on in the garage is pretty dark so I didn't think they would get enough light-activation to work properly. Figured the "Caution" cleats would actually be more visible.
11. To repair a big crack in my garbage can I used some JVCC 762-BD bi-directional filament tape as the first layer and then overlapped it with some wider width Polyken 231 military-grade duct tape. I should probably just call the trash pickup company to get a new receptacle, but this is way more fun.

So not too excessive - is it?

It’s always been easy to order multiple colors of a tape when ordering full cases, but very time consuming when ordering individual rolls. Now we’ve made it much faster. If you want to order single rolls of a tape in multiple colors or sizes, here’s what you do:

Let’s say you’re a hooper and you want to purchase single rolls of the 3/4" JVCC V-36P vinyl tape in all 17 colors it is offered in. Just add one of the items, in any desired color, to your cart. You’ll then see a pop-up window where you should click on "Continue Shopping". At that point all you need to do is change the color selection (the quantity will have already been saved) and click "Add to Cart" again. Do this until all of your desired colors have been placed in your cart.

The “Continue Shopping “ button avoids numerous clicks where you’d have to first get back to the JVCC V-36P product page before placing the new color in your shopping cart. I hope this simplifies the ordering process for those of you who are ordering single rolls of different colors or sizes of the same product.

So after being on my TO-DO list for 5 years I'm finally getting around to starting a blog for FindTape.com. A little history on the company - for over 6 years I worked for Fry (a web development company) as the Technical Director for their New York office. While there I architected ecommerce sites such as Godiva, Waterford, Wedgwood and Gracobaby.com. In 2003, I decided as a way to learn the new Microsoft .Net platform I would build my own ecommerce site as a side project to get up to speed on the new framework. I was also familiar with adhesive tape since I periodically helped out at a family-run tape converter (a company that takes jumbo log rolls of tape from manufacturers and slits them to standard-size tape rolls). The site launched in 2004 and for the first couple of years I periodically added new functionality. At the same time, I was also getting my Masters of Information Systems from NYU and built some aspects of the site as project work for some web-related classes I was taking. After a couple years the "side project" took on a life of its own and now its my primary line of work.

Since I'm a web developer at heart, over the last 6 years I've been much more likely to add new functionality to the web site (e.g., making the Tape Finder more robust or adding AJAX quick view popups to our search results and category-landing pages) than I've been on the marketing and social media sides. Guess that's why it's taken 5 years to get a blog up and running.

The purpose or goal of this blog will be to pass along interesting or useful information regarding the adhesive tape products we sell on the web site. From time to time I may also write about web development as far as how it relates to functionality on the FindTape.com site. So if you're looking for a one-stop-shop for tidbits on both adhesive tape and web development look no further.