One of my most frequently asked questions after cost and timescales is how do I package them safely. Over the years I have developed two methods, one for framed and another for unframed. In this blog post I will show you how I do both and you can see that they are very securely packaged for their journey to you.
One thing I will admit is my packaging isn’t the prettiest. Yes I could gift wrap, put in a pretty box with tags, bows etc, but there are a couple of reasons I don’t. First being expense. Not only would it take longer, I would have to get boxes made and special paper bought. This adds cost, and I would have pass the cost on. As it is I have been forced to put up my prices recently due to frame and material costs going up. Secondly I believe in recycling. Animals and nature is my passion. Yes I could buy recycled boxes etc, but that pushes the cost even higher, an what would I do with all the packaging I have that I could use, but would become redundant if I didn’t use it for packaging up my pet portraits!?
For unframed portraits, I fashion a box out of foam core. It is designed to work like a book so one side is essentially the spine and the other has tabs you can open. I use cut down strips of foam core to make walls and put those down on each side of the board the pet portrait is taped to. I then get another sheet and tape it down over the top, creating the lid. This then gets sandwiched between plenty of stiff card and put in a jiffy bag.
You can see below from the photos this is exactly how I have packed up Queenie’s portrait. I have shipped pet portraits to Australia, America and all over Europe like this safely.
As far as framed pet portraits go, I use either the boxes my frames get delivered in or I buy them online. They are sturdy and double walled. The portrait itself is securely wrapped in bubble wrap, sandwiched between at least two layers of cardboard and then the box either side of the pet portrait is stuffed with recycled paper. You know the grey stuff that comes in Amazon boxes, mostly completely unnecessarily, I save all that!
It is then posted either special delivery Royal Mail or parcelforce 24 hour.