What they don't teach in college!

[Irish]

This is sooo off topic

All last week and this week I have been working towards getting a package off to Fox Chapel of finished items for photography. Well, this morning I have been down on my knees with my packing tape, straight edge, box knife, and a huge pile of cardboard creatively making a shipping box.

Now as it's my hands working and not my head ... my head decides to consider the position I am in. And as it (my mind) wanders through a bunch of random thoughts I come to realize how much they didn't teach me way back in College.

There were no classes in College on the Fine Art of Dumpster Diving!

No College Professor ever stood before me to explain how to pick out those choice pieces of cardboard from all the wrappings, garbage, and excess waste that surrounds the boxes. No Assistant Prof got around to saying how to stay out of trouble while you are half in and half out of that dumpster rooting around for just one more big piece of cardboard! They never mentioned to bring heavy gloves so that you didn't have to actual handle all that excess stuff. And they sure did not explain that cardboard boxes from the local liquor store smell like cardboard boxes from the local liquor store ... AHHH!

I am so lucky today that our buisness is big enough that I don't have to go any further then my own studio to find cardboard. Plus I have learned over the years how to turn three small pieces of cardboard into one big side of a box.

But still, I ask you, what was I paying for way back when? I do complain! They missed teaching me one of the most basic and fundamental parts of my craft!

Susan

Baby Thanks for letting me whine!

[BobD (Archive)]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

They also didn't teach me how to keep those stupid foam peanuts from flying all over the room when I'm trying to unpack someone's artwork--or how to fit everything BACK into the box it was shipped to me in.

Bob

[Irish]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Oh No! Don't tell me I needed to include a Repacking Map?!?

I think that who ever invented the static electric styrofoam packing peanut should be taken out behind the wood shed for a good talking to! Have you ever noticed that once you unpack a peanuts package that you walk around the rest of the day with them stuck to your blue jeans and other people, even total strangers, come up behind you to pick them off ...
Susan

[BobD (Archive)]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

taken out behind the shed--or dunked in a tank full of the peanuts until he or she is totally covered in the little beasties!


Bob

[BobD (Archive)]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

As far as a packing map...maybe it's my own psychosis, but I can never understand how a person's artwork arrived here in one piece the way they packed it--so I have a tendency to Over pack things...bubblewrap and air pillows are my friends...I'm got to write a letter to a guy who sent me a scroll saw project in an ordinary envelope explaining that the automatic sorting machines the post office used turned his project into hundreds of plywood splinters! So perhaps I'm overzealous with the padding materials...

Bob

[kaiserb]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Oh No! Don't tell me I needed to include a Repacking Map?!?

I think that who ever invented the static electric styrofoam packing peanut should be taken out behind the wood shed for a good talking to! Have you ever noticed that once you unpack a peanuts package that you walk around the rest of the day with them stuck to your blue jeans and other people, even total strangers, come up behind you to pick them off ...
Susan

Something they do not teach you in college... Use a laundry spray bottle with some water in it to mist the foam peanuts when you open the package. Just a light mist not a dowsing. This will kill the static and they do not stick to you or anything else...until they charge up again.

[Irish]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Brian E! You're a genius!!! So easy, so sensible, and so elusive to my cluttered brain. I would never have thought of that.

BobD, One can not accept the emotional responsiblity of someone else's hair brained scheme ... even when it ends up as a pile of splinters on your desk. In my opinion, just let them know what happened and accept that it's their lesson to learn.
Susan

(Careful, Susan, the next letter BobD might need to write is to you ... hmmm!)

[mikeg]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Careful not to use too much water though. I know that at least some types of styrofoam peanuts will 'melt' in water. My kids used to do crafts by dipping the tip of the peanut in water and it would stick to another peanut. They used to make all sorts of things this way. If you use too much water, you'll wind up with a big mess.

mikeg

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

You think maybe those are the type peanuts Jimmy Carter raised?

[Irish]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Hi_Ho, You, Good Sir, are TOO MUCH!

Mikeg, you posting about making things out of the peanuts reminds me of high school art class and styrofoam sculptures. We would cut the styrofoam with a serrated kitchen knife and glue them together in whatever shape we wanted. It was the Abstract Art Era. Then take spray paint to them. The spray paint ate the styrofoam into some really weird - distorted - contorted shapes. I remember giving one, quite proudly I will tell you, to my Mother. She actually had the curiousy and guts to display it for a while. What Mothers will do for their children!

Susan

[kaiserb]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

Hi_Ho, You, Good Sir, are TOO MUCH!
Then take spray paint to them. The spray paint ate the styrofoam into some really weird - distorted - contorted shapes. I remember giving one, quite proudly I will tell you, to my Mother. She actually had the curiousy and guts to display it for a while. What Mothers will do for their children!

Susan

The schools today would have to put everyone in Level A safety gear with SCBA's to do that now...the tree huggers would scream about the amount of ozone destroyed and the off-gassing of the foam and solvent

[BobD (Archive)]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

I take and spray styrafoam wiht aresol paint all the time when I'm making Warhammer 40K scenery--I want that melted, blasted landscape look...it makes the styrafoam look like it was hit wiht a A-bomb...

Bob

[Donna_T]

Re: What they don't teach in college!

In an effort to add an lighthearted noteIdea : when my children were younger, they always called those white styrofoam packing peanuts, "ghost turds" and I can't look at them without remembering that!

When I have to work in them, (remember I'm the 3M product queen) I spray a light spritz of Static Guard over them--that sooths the savage beast that lurks in them and makes their parts attach to unexpected places on you!

Donna T