Washi Tape Keyboard Tutorial

If you've been on any blogs or Pinterest recently, you know that washi tape is EVERYWHERE. Essentially, what it is is Japanese colored tape. It's not super sticky on the back but has a smilier feel to painter's tape.

I saw an idea for this a while back and started it but never really finished it out. So yes, I did keep my keyboard looking like this for about a year...no big deal. But what I can report is that it looked just fine after a year (granted, I keep a cover on my keyboard which I'll show later, but not too bad!) Also, I went ahead and pulled off one of the stickers to see what would happen but it actually didn't leave any residue! 

As prep for this project, I'd recommend cleaning your keys. I just swabbed over mine with rubbing alcohol and it seemed to do the trick just fine.

The first step is buying your washi tape. There are tons of places out there but I got mine from Le Box Boutique on Etsy. It was just under $6 for 8 colors. Each came on a cute little spool and it was way more than enough tape to cover your keyboard. The colors I used were green grid, yellow dots, spring flowers, garden pink, garden blue, grey polkadots, grey diagonal, and blue stripes. If I had to do it again, I wouldn't pick the gray because you can't see it as well on the dark keys. The tape with more color and less white worked out the best.

I used a self healing cutting mat and x-acto knife to cut my tape but really, you could just use scissors and keep it simple. I did it this way because then I could cut them precisely to size.

After I stuck it on the mat, I used a clear ruler to make a vertical cut.

Then I cut the corners off the tape. Again, maybe not necessary but I did notice with the tape I had on my keys before, it was starting to pull up a little at the corners and I figured this was the safest way to go.

Then I pulled it off the mat and stuck it on the key. Don't worry about getting it right the first time. It's really easy to pull the tape back off and reposition it again if you need to.

So there you have it! My colorful keyboard in all of it's glory. I'm kind of obsessed...seeing all the colorful keys make doing real work on my computer seem a little less sad ;) Plus it's a fun way to personalize your Mac since everyone and their mother's looks exactly the same!

Like I mentioned before, I actually do keep a silicone cover on my keys so that if anything spills it won't be able to leak into the guts of my computer. The color is a little less bright that way but you can definitely still see it! 

xoxo,