I’ve talked a lot about how cardboard was made, and therefore we have all sorts of different kinds of cardboard boxes. I’ve talked about how polypropylene was made and therefore we have all sorts of plastic bags. I’ve never really talked about how packaging tape was made. Oh sure, I’ve talked about all the different varieties, and how it’s actually a really interesting subject and you somehow never run out of anything to say about it. But I’ve never actually started at the beginning! What a shame. Well, all that is about to change. Get settled in, we are going to a ride down packaging tape memory lane…

There was once an American, and it’s a great thing that he was. American, that is. I feel that so many of the great inventors were American, at least in the modern day and age. The Wright brothers, with the airplane. Alexander Graham Bell, with the telephone. Thomas Edison, with about a hundred different inventions, but the light bulb most significantly. All Americans. And right up there with them was a guy from Minnesota, who invented tape. He was working for a company that manufactured sandpaper, in the 1920s, and with the mind of a true inventor he got the idea to make tape from an autobody shop where they were testing some of the sandpaper.

He came to be aware that it was incredibly difficult for the mechanics to make straight lines when doing the two-tone paint jobs. Why he was the only one that thought of a solution I cannot comprehend, but I suppose that is the mindset which comes with already having everything invented and at my fingertips in vast quantities and for fairly cheap. Anyway, he began by using a strip of paper with adhesive on the edges, and the idea of masking tape was born. Of course it was perfected over time, and ten years later he added Scotch tape to the mix. This was just in time for the Great Depression, because people began using tape to repair things instead of buying a new replacement.

There is a whole different story when it comes to duct tape, but that one will have to be told at another time. Hopefully you come back to check it out some time. In the meantime, you can fill all your packaging tape needs at PackagingSupplies.com.

What good is clear packaging tape? Well, I’ll tell you. When you get it at PackagingSupplies.com you are getting quality carton sealing tape at discounted prices, just like the website says! Currently, it’s even on sale. This is a good product to have when you want your packaging jobs to look clean and professional. Of course other kinds of tape would do the job as well, but sometimes we just need to make a better impression.

It’s one thing to throw some duct tape on an old diaper box and send it off to your mother-in-law, but when you are trying to mail a company product you wouldn’t want to take the same approach. This is where clear packaging tape comes into play. At PackagingSupplies.com there are four different strengths to buy, from light duty to heavy duty. You can get the rolls in two inch widths, or three inch.

So there’s clear packaging tape, and then there’s ultra clear packaging tape. Perhaps this just seems a little obnoxious, and maybe even like a marketing ploy. But the ultra clear stuff really is ultra clear: you can see right down to the cardboard core. Now that’s something you can’t do with plain old clear. The ultra clear is perfect for covering mailing labels, or labels of any kind.

I’m going to tell you a little secret. I’ve used the ultra clear packaging tape to laminate. When my son was a toddler I printed out the letters of the alphabet, numbers, shapes and colors, sight words, and animals. I laid out super long strips of the tape, cut out the pictures and placed them on the tape, and then laid another strip of tape over them. I simply cut in between the pictures, did a little bit of trimming, and voila, I had some laminated, pictures!

Then I did one better by hot-gluing a little magnet to the back of each one and suddenly my son would be busy for the entire time I was cooking dinner. You can’t pay enough to get that kind of peace, let me tell you. I’ve even considered making up little baggies of these laminated, magnet pictures and selling them at craft fairs. People overcharge homemade stuff so much that I’m sure I could wind up walking away with some decent compensation. The best part is that no one would even know I had used clear packaging tape!