Make A Week: Make 5: Duct Tape Wallet

Oh, duct tape! Is there anything you can't do? Here in Alaska, duct tape is practically a natural resource. I am willing to bet that at any given time, there is a giant roll of duct tape in every household in the state. We use it for everything up here. I've seen boots that were more duct tape than leather, cars seemingly held together with nothing more than duct tape and wishes, and I've even used duct tape as a bandage after slicing my finger on a fillet knife while processing salmon on the Kenai River. I think the best use of duct tape I've seen is an old pickup truck, "painted" completely with hot pink duct tape. Oh yeah, we even use it to occasionally repair duct work!
Duct tape also has a long and proud history in the tool kits of do-it-yourselfers and makers, as is evidenced by the many duct tape projects on instructables.com and wikihow.com. It was on the latter that I found the basic instructions for this week's project, a duct tape wallet.
I've been wanting to make things for family and friends as a part of the Make A Week project, and so I decided that this week's duct tape wallet would be for my son, Dylan.

If you don't know my son, let me tell you a little bit about him. Dylan is 17 years old, and has Asperger Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder. He is exceptionally bright, and can talk to you (or at you, it sometimes seems) about topics ranging from linguistics to quantum physics. However, he rarely, if ever, reads social cues. He frequently has to ask "are you joking?" when you are obviously kidding. He really can't tell. He also is, well, unusual. He is unlike a typical teenager in many ways. He has no interest in driving, no interest in dating, and no interest in doing typical social things. This includes dealing with money. He has little interest in money, and will frequently forget the $10 and $20 bills that come tucked in to birthday cards. One result of this complete disinterest in money is that he doesn't have a wallet. A cool, hand-made duct tape wallet is just the thing!
I asked Dylan what color wallet he wanted. I have classic gray, black, and tie-dye patterned duct tape. He chose tie-dye, so that's what we worked with. I started the wallet by going to these instructions. I followed them, mostly, with a few minor deviations.
I started with my materials: a roll of tie-dye duct tape, scissors, a cutting board, and a tape measure.

I then started to make the first piece of the wallet, a sheet of fabric, more or less, made of duct tape, stuck sticky side to sticky side. This was cut down to approximately 7 in by 10 in.

I then folded this over, and made the first recognizably wallet-shaped thing.

From here, things moved very quickly. I made 2 more, smaller squares of duct-tape fabric to form the pockets in the wallet. These were taped in, and then I added 2 decorative and supportive strips of black duct tape to each end of the wallet. Here's the finished product: