Last week when I was visiting friends from college, my friend Derek expressed interest in making some custom designs in griptape for his new longboard.  I offered to draw up a design in photoshop.  His roommate has access to a waterjet machine, but we got too excited and decided to just cut it all out and finish it in one night.   We ended up working on it until 5 a.m.

This is the design we came up with in photoshop.

The blank canvas.

Me cutting out a guide to match up to the risers on the deck so we can cut the griptape exact.

Ends of the griptape cut to fit the deck.

Test fitting the tape.

Laying out the grid on the tape.  Each square is 2 in. x 2 in.

The completed grid, ready for freehanding.

Compass and ruler, freehanding the the design using the guides.

More progress, since it’s drawn in pencil, the circles are really hard to see.

The completed drawing.

We didn’t have any exacto knives so we used what we had to cut the circles, two razor blades.

Needless to say, after an hour of cutting, our fingers were hurting pretty good.

Cutting completed, and all the pieces taped back into the form.

Layout begins.

Finished!