 Rebecca from Art Resin here today to talk about how to package your Art Resin art for shipping. So you made some beautiful artwork, you coded it in Art Resin, and you sold it for a ton of money. Now you need to ship it to your buyer and make sure that it gets there safely and securely. There are some dos and some don'ts that I'm going to share with you. First and foremost, you absolutely must make sure that your work is fully cured. In this case, that means 72 hours post a pour. Now while it may seem fully cured after that 24 hour mark, it's good enough to hang on the wall but it's not good enough to package because you're going to be wrapping it in all of these packaging materials and you just need to make sure that everything is 100% fully cured. So wait 72 hours, if you've actually poured a really thick layer on there, then you'll want to wait even longer than that. The next step you should do is put on some gloves to avoid getting fingerprints all over your artwork. This might seem like an insignificant detail but trust me it's going to save you some headaches in the long run. Next you want to roll out a blanket so you have a nice soft surface for working on and avoid any scratches on your art resin surface. So now we're ready to get into the packaging materials and we actually recommend that you work in layers. With the first layer against the surface of the art resin being a beautiful product called Glacine. It's a paper product, it's really smooth, it's glossy, it's non abrasive, it's acid free and it will not scratch up your nice art resin surface. It's actually something that's used by museums and photographers to make sure that their photos don't stick to one another. It can be a little hard to find, actually I recommend getting it from Uyine or Amazon. Those are pretty reliable sources for Glacine. So Glacine looks a little like tissue paper but I'll show you the difference. It's really not the same at all. Tissue paper is very cheap feeling. It is a little abrasive when you compare the two and so when you're talking about protecting your beautiful art that you've spent so much time on, don't cheap out. Go with the Glacine, it's smooth, it's acid free and you will be happy with it. Now let's say you can't find Glacine or it's just really too cross prohibitive for you, I have three other options. This is craft paper, this brown stuff, you've probably seen this before. This can do a very nice job protecting the art resin surface. This is butcher paper, again a lot cheaper, not as nice as Glacine but it will do the trick and if you're really in a pinch, parchment. But as I said I really do recommend using Glacine so that's what we're going to use today. So we're just going to wrap this like a present. You can just use Scotch tape for this, it's totally fine. So now the surface is protected and we just need to put some cushioning around this to make sure that it doesn't get bumped around too much when you give it to the shipping carrier. And for that I have this nice material, this is called polyfoam. It comes in different thicknesses. I have a really thin one here so I'm going to double up, maybe even quadruple up depending on how overprotective I want to be and again you just wrap like a present. Now if for some reason you can't find polyfoam you do need some sort of cushion in there so make sure that you're wrapping in a drop cloth, some rags or even just cardboard. Anything to mitigate the bump in the shock of shipping. So voila, this is all set, ready for the box. Now one thing I do need to make you aware of is bubble wrap. Bubble wrap is a giant no-no for the simple reason that these little bubbles are like a million little fingerprints all over your art. And especially if this is all wrapped around your art and stuck in a shipping truck with weight on top of it that's really going to make a whole lot of little impressions on your art resin surface that neither you nor your buyer are going to be very happy with. So get rid of this, you now need it, stick with the foam or the cardboard and you and your buyer are going to be so happy you did. So from here just use your appropriate size box, slip it in there, put a label on it, breathe a sigh of relief that your piece is properly protected. Now what if you had a gigantic piece of art, what would you do then? Well we went to visit our friend Mike Hammer who showed us how to pack like a pro. My name is Mike Hammer and I'm an artist and I'm here to talk to you a bit about how I've been creating my artwork for the last three or four years and how I've developed in that time. While creating was a huge deal right in the beginning because of the weight of these pieces, these pieces are very heavy and then the resin. The resin becomes a problem as you know because if anything touches the resin, plastic will leave imprints, bubble wrap will leave imprints on it. So we had this problem of the crazy weight of the pieces plus protecting the surface so we couldn't do cardboard box. So the crates solve that problem, they're just, it's the right standard, it's better protection and also with wood you just got so much you can do. There's so many ways you can, it just allows you to do whatever you want. And I guess all these things that I'm doing are because I've had damage works, I've had works go, I've had works come back and the cost to have a client repackage work or a gallery repackage work, ship it back, do the paperwork to have it come back, get it back, open it up, fix all the damage and that is is a huge cost and I've had that happen with galleries and clients and so as soon as that happened with both I said never again. So we're going to beef up you know as much as possible. So the first one I'm going to describe is the small one and in the small one where you're using three-quarter plywood for all the frames. That's consistent. You use plywood instead of like a one by six that's the same size as one by six pine but that's not as strong so you're always using three-quarter inch plywood. So first you measure your piece and you create a frame that is about six inches longer on each side. So if the piece is a 30 by 30 then we set the outer frame to be 36 by 36. That leaves about two and a quarter inches on each side for play to move the piece and gives it some breathing room. I can put my fingers easily underneath the piece now especially since it's heavy it's nice to have that spacer. So basically you build your outer frame, you drill your screws in on the sides and you've got this nice outer frame. Once your frame is done then you add your styrofoam on the inside liner just with a glue gun so if something gets stuck the side's not going to get damaged and then you've got a face and you've got a back. Now the backing has got to hold the weight of your piece. That depends on how heavy your piece is. So the piece we're showing you here is a bit heavier. So we put a three-quarter panel on the back three-quarter inch plywood. Normally you could get away maybe with a three-eighths inch or half inch for the back. Then the front you can get away with three-eighths inch plywood if you're going to send it by itself just a small piece. And then that's basically it. You put the back on, you put the crate down, you lay the piece inside and then in our case we do something a little bit special because on the edges of my piece I have little drips. And so for some of you out there you know if you have drips coming off the edge you have a problem because you don't want that getting squished. So we put an extra piece of three-quarter inch plywood behind and then the work attaches through the crate. Now actually the benefit of that is, and I actually would recommend this for all pieces, is normally what you do is you drill behind into the frame. But the frame is only about this thick. So if you miss you're going to ruin your frame. So instead I do suggest regardless of how thick add a piece of three-quarter inch plywood behind. It could just be three inches from end to end. Then you can easily drill that like we're going to do to the frame on the top and the bottom. You want to make sure when you're doing this that you're drilling as close as possible right in the middle of your wood so you don't split it. And you do want to pre-drill first here. If you don't you definitely run the risk of cracking your frame and then the piece is essentially ruined. So then you lay the painting into the crate and then you drill from behind in the correct spot. It's basically just drawn a line underneath so he knows where to drill so he can drill right into that three-quarter inch bumper. And then the screw goes through the back of the painting through the bumper and holding the painting securely floating in the crate. So the best part now is that you've got a piece that's essentially floating. It's almost like a frame, a floating frame. And then you pop your cover on and screw in the top. Okay we're good with this one. Okay so this is ready. Crate number two basically the same as crate number one. So this is if you're shipping a bigger piece. You need extra support. The frame is the same. You've got a three-quarter inch frame all the way around. You've got a back three-eighths inch plywood for your back. Here's where things change. You've got to add strapping. Strapping is a piece of three-eighths inch plywood but you can use other dimensions. Cut as strips to reinforce the outer back and the front to enhance the rigidity while keeping the weight down. So if this X wasn't here, this cross, this would be a real weak point right in the middle. So this just strengthens without adding crazy amounts of weight. Some people say well why don't you just put a piece of three-quarter inch plywood across the whole top. That's gonna add crazy amounts of weight and very, very expensive. So usually you do like erecting all the way around and then maybe a couple pieces in the middle and then a few small pieces. Kind of like a checkerboard kind of pattern. And then that would be your backing. And then you attach that to the frame. And then again you put your bumpers on the painting. The three-quarter inch ply. Put the painting in and drill from behind. Now you need to drill from behind through a place where there is the three-eighths inch ply and you have the three-eighths inch strapping. So you gotta make sure wherever you put that, that's where your painting is getting attached from behind. So if for example your bumper's too low it only goes through the three-eighths inch plywood and not where they're strapping that might not securely hold the painting. But notice that we've screwed in through the three-eighths inch plywood where there's the strapping as well. Now if we were to actually ship this piece this isn't ship ready. It would need some more strapping. You know, probably one, two, three, four more pieces vertically as well. So basically the back goes on, it's got strapping. The front goes on, it's already got strapping and that's it, you're done. It's basically the same thing in a bigger crate. So the third creating method is a two-part method. The idea is that you properly create with your plywood the piece but not with a full front and back. Just a couple slats. Which allows you to see the piece first of all and display it temporarily but it doesn't weigh a ton and you don't have to take off a front and a back. And then those that one view and crate or more can go into a larger shipping container. So you create this outer box that holds anywhere from one to four or five pieces and essentially they slide in. You put one door on the front and so either the gallery or customs has to take out a few screws off the front, lift the door off and then boom. One, two, three, four paintings come out. They don't need to take off any covers. They don't need to come close to the work. There's plastic over the work so it's protected. They slide them back in and they've got one cover instead of six. All around it's just a perfect right way to do it all the way around, especially if you're dealing with galleries. We're going to be doing all our crates this way because you can see the work. It takes less initial time to make the view and create them the full crate and it just kind of sits there in a dust-free kind of environment. And then when you're ready to ship it off, maybe you're gonna put two together or four together. You can just measure and make your bigger crate. So building the fuel and crate, again it all starts just like the other ones. You start with three-quarter ply so you create your outer frame. So this is our frame. This is the base of all of them and it's measured at six inches wider and longer than the size of the piece. Okay, so I'm gonna drill the pilot holes here. Can you push here for a sec, Jerry? We just have no stability here. We're gonna put three pieces. They're gonna act like a brace. This time instead of a full front and a full back, you're putting two or three strips, either vertically or horizontally, to the back of the piece. Those back strips are three-quarter inch ply. And then you put your styrofoam, as usual. And then you take your piece, which has its spacer. What is a spacer? A spacer is just a single piece of three-quarter inch plywood generally that you would attach to the back of your frame that would then get attached to your crate as a solid, secure and easy way to attach it to the crate. This spacer is doing double duty. Number one, we're going to attach the piece to the crate using this spacer here, but this spacer is also, if you come to the side, it's cut at a 45-degree angle and we use this to hang as well. And we have one on the bottom as well. This would allow the client to hang it this way or this way on either side. And so this is a really nice solution, especially if your work is very heavy. One, two, three. So you've got your piece. It can go straight onto your back three or two slats. And then from underneath, you drill. And this time you can drill right into your frame or into your bumper. This is the benefit of this system versus the other. So with the other system, you have a completely covered back and you can't see what's on the other side. And so when you're drilling, like if you went into here and if you drill close to the side there, you're ruining your painting. If you're drilling there, you're ruining it. Here, I can easily see that I've got this huge chunk. I don't even have to measure. I can just start drilling. And then in this case, instead of a top, you can just put a couple more slats of this three-quarter inch plywood right on top. And then if you are in a dusty kind of environment, you can just wrap it with something that they call Super Six, which is a nice thick plastic and then just staple the sides. That's your view and crate. That's it. So the nice thing is you can see if we have this in the studio, right? It's protected. And it's like, oh, if a client comes in or a gallery comes in, I've often had this problem, right? I have pieces stacked, put away, and a client comes in or a gallery comes in, they wanna see it, and it's all packaged up or created. They can't see the piece. And this way, I can easily take off the plastic or they can see approximately what we're looking at and we're fine. It's protected from dust. I can even stack them. So it's essentially a crate, but I call it a view and crate. Once you have one view and crate, it's really up to you how you wanna do a larger shipping container. Basically, you make two sides with strapping all the way around and that's done with OSB in this case because that's cheaper. So we save money. That's oriented strand board and that's the cheapest for a big sheet and it's also quite strong. This, as you can see, you could crack in any one of these locations. So we use it singularly for this purpose of faces for the outer crate. Jerry already pre-cut the face. He cuts the big faces first and then puts a two by three. This is two by three. And then you sandwich your painting in your view and crate and then you measure the top and create your top and then you attach those pieces all together and basically make a box. And then on the bottom of your box, you put two legs if it's really heavy so you can put a forklift or a pallet truck underneath. If it's not that heavy, you don't need the legs at all. And basically, you'll just have five, 10, 15 screws on one face. You open it up, slide your view and crate in, close it up and you're done. Now, if you have two or three view and crates, it's the same process. You lay your view and crates beside each other, make them snug and it's the same process. It just feels more solid and secure. So I think I've just been learning, you know, probably just the right way to do things. I'm starting to see that a lot of other artists do this and use this kind of technique. So I keep looking for ways to improve it and to make it better. Because I think it's really technology in a way. This is the technological aspect and I've always said that the best technology is the technology you don't feel, that you don't notice. So like the best backpack, this is the backpack you don't feel. As soon as you feel something, you know it's hurting you. Best crate is the crate that you don't notice. You get it here and it's just everything's perfect. So when you slide the paintings out, it's like perfect. It's just like simple. So thanks for watching. That's Crating 101 at Mike Hammer Fine Art Studio. Hope you enjoyed the little tutorial and good luck creating your work.