Scraps | THE CARDBOARD COLLECTIVE

Cardboard Souls (and Insoles)

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Posted on May 7, 2013 by adohrenwend

You can use cereal boxes if you don’t have this kind of cardboard on hand.

I’m not quite sure how this Mother’s Day or Father’s Day project will find it’s audience; (unless I’ve gained a tween readership I’m unaware of) maybe it would be a more likely graduation or wedding project. I’m just putting this idea out there in the hope that at least one set of cardboard insoles will find it’s way into a pair of sassy mom pumps, or groovy dad shoes that are out dancing the night away, celebrating how awesome it is to be a parent.

…and Mom, I really wanted to make these for you, but I don’t have a pair of your shoes here in Tokyo to make the pattern from, so sorry about that. I hope you like the Mother’s Day present I did send you. It’s not made of cardboard.

Honey Comb Cardboard

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Posted on March 21, 2013 by adohrenwend

The Cardboard Collective: Honey Comb Cardboard

A beautiful new cardboard find this week: Honey comb. I only have a few pieces dug out of a fruit vendors recycling pile.

We’ve come up with one way to use it so far…in our toolboxes.

Nest Building with Kraft Paper

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Posted on March 13, 2013 by adohrenwend

Spring is in the air here in Tokyo and we’ve been blessed with more than a week of beautiful 60 degree days. While out spotting Ume blossoms, we’ve been watching lots of birds, and talking a lot about nest building. I’m totally fascinated with all kinds of animal (and people) homes, so I’ve been thinking about how we could make a nest that the girls could build, add to, and alter.

Last week I did some Spring cardboard cleaning and stumbled across some Kraft paper that I had fished out of a neighbor’s recycling some time ago. Kraft paper (the base material for cardboard) works great for this project, but you could also use large sheets of newspaper, or if you’re a teacher try used, crumpled bulletin board paper.

I let the girls work with the Kraft paper to build the nest shape and showed them how to use the screwdriver to push the ribbon through the paper.

They were not strong enough to puncture the paper on their own, so in the end I had to help them secure the sides….maybe in a few years they’ll be independent young nest builders!

We watched a few BBC videos to show the girls how birds use different materials in their nests. They were inspired to add ribbons, play scarves, and lots of junky little things from around the house to the nest before they climbed in with a few good books.

I recommend building the nest on some kind of platform. We made ours from pineapple and banana boxes. There must be some kind of technical term for the fun factor that comes from elevating a play structure… the bird’s definitely know what I’m talking about.

Enjoy Mr. Attenborough with your cup of tea…….

Brighten up Your Cardboard

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Posted on February 21, 2013 by adohrenwend

Winter is grey and cardboard is brown! I’ve been feeling the need to share some of my favorite ideas for bringing energizing color into your cardboard projects…

Layered columns of boldly colored Origami paper…

What I call Amazon Chevron. (Textured cardboard that requires a coat of decoupage glue.)

Coloring book pages, kids can decorate them with marker after you’ve decoupaged them. These are from Tokyo Street Art Coloring book by my friend Chris B of a Small Lab. https://gumroad.com/l/tokyo-colour-in

Water colors: Add a coat of decoupage glue to preserve the intensity of color.

Tiled Chiyogami papers

Spliced album covers.

Cheerful graphics from the Produce Department.

And don’t forget all the good old decoupage ideas from around the web!

Grocery Bag Business Cards

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Posted on February 6, 2013 by adohrenwend

Meeting new people here in Japan involves developing more formalized graces. As a farm girl from the Midwest, this is always an area of improvement for me.

One artifact of the Japanese getting to know you ritual is the business card and/or name card. When you meet someone new in Japan it’s considered polite to exchange your contact information in this tangible, well organized way.

I for one love the practice, as it’s elevated me from the frantic find a pen and write your name and phone number on an old receipt routine to a calmer more professional approach. Proper procedure involves offering your name card with both hands (as shown above) with a little bow of the head.

Now that the blog is becoming more of it’s own entity, I put together a name card using some brown Kraft paper grocery bags that I found in someone’s recycling the other day. It’s not as heavy as a traditional business card, but I think it’s really nice, and still very durable. If you have a business card template on your word-processing software it’s a very easy process.

I originally wanted to print onto post-consumer cardboard, but my ideal specimen would be a cereal box, and unfortunately we’re an oatmeal and eggs family. Cereal is not widely eaten for breakfast in Japan, so it’s also been hard to find used cereal boxes. I’d love to hear if anyone has tried printing on cereal boxes, did your printer take them?

I also wanted to share this great link with you, showcasing a letterpress printer that prints business cards onto old cereal boxes. (If I ever get a business info stamp, this could be a possible approach for my old tea boxes.) They are BEauTiful! Lots of other great ideas there too…

So hey, even if you’re business-less, how about a name-card or blog-card to step up your game? Why not?