A couple days ago I was feeling cheap and impatient to ride my sea foam ironman, so I wrapped the bars with some left over moto exhaust wrap and just taped it on firmly with electrical. those who care will probably scoff at how it looks- particularly the tape , but it matches well enough and feels pretty good!

anyone else gotten creative with the wrapping?

I bought a Raleigh Grand Prix once that had cut up old inner tubes as bar wrap. NOT pretty, but I guess it got the job done.

My Ersazt Gran Prix is done enough for road testing - fine tuning parts of the build including handle bar angles and brake lever positioning. During this phase I don't have the final bar wrap on as I keep changing things. So I also have old inner tube. I cut an old 700x23 inner tube lengthwise, twice, to get two long thin strips. That's on the bars now. It's stretch holds it on nicely and it looks just fine from 6 feet away. Comfortable for riding too. Who knows when I take that off and do a proper wrap. This stuff is all black, nice evenly spaced wrapping and does not move while riding. Works just fine.

I used four rolls of tennis racket grip tape left over from my daughter's tennis craze days. Rolled on thin and obviously a joint at the brake levers but looked nice, felt great but provided no padding. That is when I learned what I should have known from my glove testing, padding on bars or with gloves have little if any impact on my finger numbness.

I've got an old 30's era racer with friction tape on the bars.

The stuff we used to call "tire tape" usually Monkey Grip brand? As a kid I taped baseball bat handles with it along with anything else that needed grip or repair. It was my duct tape of the late 1950's.