Category: Packaging Trash

One day I peeled the labels off a plastic bottle that had held skin cream. I was impressed with the elegant form of this white object. I cut it in half and made a wrap out of it.

I continued to save these specific bottles. This gift-basket wrap is my first attempt at joining a number of them.

I traced a half-circle on the tops of the bottle, cutting the top off with my scroll saw. I had to sand the edges to  remove a burr.

I used a plastic 35mm film can to join the five bottles together. I applied a stripe of hot glue to the side of the film can and joined it to the first bottle. I arranged the five bottles into a pentagonal array, marked the film can, added stripes of glue and, one-at-a-time, joined the five bottles into the basket.

In reference to the floral form, I added five stamen made out of drinking straws with craft foam on the top. Then I stuffed the five pockets and the central well with recycled wrapping tissue.

This wrap accommodates small gifts such as candy, gift cards, pens and pencils, or jewelry.

Aluminum is a beautiful material. Yet it is one that passes routinely through our lives, used, ignored, and trashed. When I recently cleaned up an aluminum bake pan that had held a wealth of barbecued buffalo ribs left over from a banquet I organized at The Fort, I tried to roll it out flat, as I have often done with regular aluminum foil. But I could see that I did not have the right tool to flatten this substantial piece of aluminum.

So instead I decided I must embrace the wrinkles. Using my old trasher scissors, I cut a rectangle for wrap. I added a few more wrinkles. Then, with the help of a metal ruler, I wrapped the box in the traditional way, sustaining only two cuts from aluminum’s eager edge. I hot-glued the ends shut.

Experiments brings surprises; the resulting shiny, wrinkled wrap was remarkably dimensionless. Clearly I needed more elements to the wrap. So I cut a strip from the bake pan’s lid and tried out yet another experiment I had been thinking of;  I put the strip through my oil-paint tube-crimper. That made the shiny ribbed band you see wrapped first around the package. It made a good texture, but the color was too similar, so I added the gold-foil paper band to finish off the package.

More experimentation may be required in this realm of trash aluminum, but this is a good start. This wrap has a substantial heft and texture when held; your fingers will say “This is not aluminum foil!”

I confess to a fondness for the plastics that pass through our kitchen. The foam used to package things from the meat counter are light, shiny and easy to cut. After making some stews with our new crock pot I sidetracked some trays into my wrap bin. As I continued washing the dishes I could begin to see fins emerging from a wrap.

I wrapped the present in red paper from a shopping bag. I cut and glued the fins. I put little dabs of hot glue on the fins and attached some recycled gold-foil-and-white wrapping cord to add an element of sparkle from the traditional wrap aesthetic. Last of all, I cut, fitted and glued the dark green rectangle to complete the wrap and make a frame for recipient’s initials.

I have been enjoying taking a more sculptural approach to wrapping. It opens the door for new uses of throw-away materials. And it is lots of fun.

Over the holidays a white plastic take-out food box turned up in our kitchen. It’s one of a new style of take-out box. Not the white closed-cell foam variety. It had a textured surface with rounded crenillations. It had two simple closure snaps. It had a square, raised protrusion in the center of the lid. There was something 19th century about its shape and detail. It only lacked some fabric complexity and a bit of metal.

I added grey cords taken from shopping-bag handles, gluing them into a molded groove in the box lid’s outer edge. Next, I added the red ribbon which surrounds the crenillations. I added some silver shopping-bag paper trim: a square with rounded corners in the central embossed medallion, and two little folded pieces on top of the closure snaps, to simulate metal hardware.

With the gift inside resting on tissue paper, I snapped the box shut and wrapped a piece of blue gauze ribbon around it all. I added the label sticker. It is hard to capture the odd charm of this wrap in a single photo. Humor plays a part in this wrap as a utilitarian box shifts into a new context.

This began with my stash of orange-juice-carton caps. Two caps make eyes. Two make ears. I reached for a large piece of silver paper which I had recycled from a particularly fancy shopping bag and wrapped the present’s box. I already had a vision of the robot’s mouth; I rendered it in red craft foam and added a black piece to give it dimension.

I spent some time positioning the eyes, from wall-eyed to narrow. Each position has an emotional impact. There are few more powerful templates in our brains than the face templates we build as infants. Adding the ears was easy.

My method for gluing on caps is based on the fact that hot glue will flow. I add two medium dabs of glue on the inner edge of the cap. I place it on the wrap surface. I wait. The glue inside the cap flows down and bonds with the surface. It stays pretty warm inside the cap; give the glue some time to solidify.

Making and gluing the mouth is simple. In fact this is a very simple, quick wrap overall, and one with the potential for many variations.