Using Cardboard for Arts & Crafts

Oftentimes, adults don’t do enough childlike things to keep their lives interesting, always on the move, and unique enough to be engaged. It’s quite easy to fall into a boring, monotonous lifestyle that consists of work, cooking dinner, cleaning up the place, putting the TV on for an hour or two, and falling asleep to get ready to do it all over again.

Kids seem to live much more interesting lives, though (I mean, of course they do with all the free time they have). Their perspective on the world is much more fresh and open to new experiences than adults simply because they’re still taking everything in as exciting, refreshing, different, and fun.

It’s that thought alone that makes me realize that I truly do want to be a kid at heart for the rest of my life. Sure, there are a lot of responsibilities I need to consider as an adult, but why be the same boring adult that everyone else out there seems to be when I could still have fun with my own interests and hobbies while also trying out new things with my friends and partner?

Crafts are an answer to that problem. I’ve always thought that I was pretty uncreative and “bad” at art, so getting crafty is the perfect response to that thought.

You’re probably thinking “What the heck?” right about now. And I once thought that, too.

But if you really sit down and think about the process of being “good” at art, it’s not an inherent skill. Just like other skills in your life, art is one of those, and it can actually be refined with practice and exploration. Writing it off as some sort of native ability, though, will mean you always view it as out of your reach.

So the next time you have a free evening with your spouse or a friend, dedicate some time to have a little arts and crafts session. You’ll be surprised at how much fun it is, how liberating it can be, and what your end product ends up looking like.

My suggestion is to grab a few old shipping boxes and break them down into flat pieces for painting. As a medium, cardboard is a very industrial variant that can be rough, everyday, or quite clean. The good thing is, you’re not spending anything out of pocket for a few shipping boxes. The better thing is that you can scrap the piece once you’re done if you’re not satisfied or just don’t have the room for it.

Guide to Ensure Safe Arrival of your Package

More odds of items’ breakability can make the package shipping a trickier process. There are certain factors that make things complicated. Thus, avoiding those factors can make the shipping process safe and smooth. It is worth mentioning that major part of this avoidance process is associated with effective packaging.

To ensure that your package doesn’t get damaged during the transit, here is a simple guide you can get help from.

Countering issues of containment

Start by picking the right box. The item you are going to ship would need some room in the box. This space prevents item’s breakage in case the package is handled in a rough manner during transit. Thus, you will have to make sure that walls and flaps of the box are not touching the items. Furthermore, this space allows the receiver to open the box without damaging the items.

Provide cushioning to the items

Only leaving the space isn’t enough to ensure the package’s safety. As a matter of fact, a freely moving item in the box has more chance of breaking. Hence, cushioning the item in order to restrict its movement in the box is one of the precautionary measures without which the chances of item’s breakage are increased by many folds. There are a number of packaging materials which can be used for cushioning purposes.

• Bubble rolls are highly effective in providing safety to the items that need to retain their 100% integrity to ensure functionality. Electronic items like computers and their hardware are secured most commonly with the help of bubble rolls and bubble wraps. It’s a general advice to tape the bubble roll after wrapping it around the item. Nevertheless, professionals don’t recommend the use of these rolls when shipping slippery breakables like dishes and glasses.
• Peanuts are a great option to fill the void in the box that contains toys and breakables meant to be used in kitchen. However, the use of peanuts is not encouraged in order to provide cushioning to electronic items because this packaging material contains static electricity. Moreover, peanuts aren’t reusable.
• Peanuts are messy, so the better alternate may be the use of packing paper. Packing paper provides satisfactory padding to the light and delicate items. The harsher handling of shipping boxes can produces a pressure that can be absorbed well with the help of packing paper. Another advantage of packing paper is that it can be reused.

Things to watch out for

Breakables, important documents and heavy items need more attention than standard packaging supplies. Hence, the packaging of these items needs to be done keeping worst case scenario into consideration.

• To pack highly delicate or breakable items, use some extra layers of bubble wrap. Fill remaining void with peanuts and tag the box with a label ‘Fragile’.
• You can’t afford your important documents, such as legal documents, to get damaged during the transit. Using padded mailers can be the good option but it’s even better if you use cardboard mailing box or a mailing tube.
• Heavy items aren’t only self-damaging but they can injure the handler too. The best practice to pack these items is to make sure that you are not putting extra weight on any of the side of the package. Doing such would destabilize the package during transportation. Stretch wrap is recommended to provide safety to heavy items.