{diy: washi tape flags}

Washi tape. Chances are you've seen a roll in a pattern you can't resist, and bought it. Chances are, once you've got one roll, you've decided to become a washi collector. Chances are, you now have an entire cupboard piled high with red tape, blue tape, tape with musical notes, with Japanese stamps, with the entire words of Shakespeare printed in miniature. 

But what do you actually do with the stuff?

You make flags. And then you make cupcakes. And then you stick the flags into the cupcakes and have a jolly good time.

Having made millions hundreds dozens of little flags for Mossa's birthday earlier this week, I've got the method down. Is it so basic that you could probably do it in your sleep already? Yes. Am I going to share it anyway? Yes. It might save you a bit of awkward finger/scissor/tape/cocktail stick manoeuvring.

(Are you drooling over those cakes above? Bakewell Cupcakes, baked by my sister, Alice, they use The Best Cupcake Ever recipe that I shared the other day)

You'll need:

• scissors
• cocktail sticks (long or short. I prefer long as you can cut them to make short ones, too)
• washi tape

Pull one end of the tape out, a good ten centimetres, and place the unpokey (i.e. 'blunt', for people who use 'real' words) end of a cocktail stick in the middle of the length of tape.

Fold the end of the tape over the top of the cocktail stick, sticking it to the tape on the other side of the stick. (Note: at first I was very worried about lining up the edges on both sides of the tape, but then got over myself and decided it looked quite nice uneven anyway.)

Snippy snippy. One straight cut, to separate the flag from the roll of tape, and two pointy cuts, if you like the snake-tongue effect. 

Here's another case of unnecessary worrying -- I oh-so-carefully measured the first two or three flags, and then decided that it was all a bit faffy, really, and decided to enjoy a variety of lengths of flag. Perfectly imperfect. Or, so I tell myself. We also scribbled '90' onto the flags in a very imperfect and blobby blue biro. 

We stuck the flags in cupcakes. We stuck them in Fruit Pastilles. We stuck them in Cadbury's Giant Chocolate Buttons. We slotted them into the holes in Polo mints. I even poked a couple into the tail feathers of my Mum's favourite straw chickens, to give them a bit of festive 'pluck'. In short: stick a flag in anything, and it becomes more exciting. 

So, tell me: am I wrong? Do you have tons of uses for washi tape? Have you never heard of the stuff, much less been tempted to buy any? Or do you, in fact, have the complete works of Chaucer on washi tape instead?