I love my flash drives, but I drop and lose them a lot. A duct tape sleeve makes your memory stick unique, eye-catching, and a bit more floor-resistant.

Note: I've only made these for flash drives that open with a slider. The concept probably works for other kinds but would need tweaking.

Time: 15 minutes.

Materials:
flash drive
duct tape
scissors

Step 1: Base Layer

Start by making a two-sided square of duct tape a bit bigger than the surface area of the flash drive, maybe the size of the wrapping paper you would use to wrap the drive in. Try to leave as few wrinkles as possible. This just takes practice.

Step 2:

Trim the tape to a size that will snugly wrap around the long side of the drive with no extra hanging off the ends, but a small amount overlapping the sides. Scissors are great for creating clean edges on any part of a duct tape project.

Step 3:

Eye up where the flash drive's slider bar would be on the outside of the duct tape. Poke a hole there with the scissors, then cut out the area where the slider needs to be able to move.

Step 4:

Create a back for the sleeve with a skinny piece of tape wrapped as shown. If you don't want bare tape touching the drive, cover the sticky side in the middle with tape and leave the ends sticky, then apply it to the backside of the case.

I also left room in the back and cut out some of the body to make sure I could still fit it on a keyring. If you don't care about this, you can cover the whole back of the drive.

Step 5:

This is optional, but to keep the flash drive from getting pulled out of the cover, stick a tiny piece of tape on either or both sides of the hole for the plug. It's pretty easy to pull it back to get the drive out of the case and stick it back over when you put it in again.