packing question

[danaeris]

I have this original piece of art with a custom fit glass "frame."

The box I'd been intending to pack it in is just long enough, and sufficiently wide, and amply thick.

I can wrap it in bubble wrap and fill the rest of the box with paper goods and styrofoam peanuts. This will provide tons of padding above and below it, and enough on either side, but at the top and bottom there would be no padding beyond that provided by the cardboard box.

Is this likely to do the trick being shipped over ground from here to Buffalo? If it broke, how expensive is it to frame a non-standard sized piece of art?

Comments

[basmati.livejournal.com]

When you put the word "frame" in quotes, what does that mean? Does it mean that there's a piece of glass cut to fit the art, attached some way to the art, but not with a traditional kind of frame?

Regardless, you should have space in the box on all sides for padding; having the edge right next to the cardboard on top and bottom is probably not sufficient. If the glass breaks, it can damage the art. I'd find a new box.

Also, tape masking tape across the glass in a criss-cross pattern, spacing the pieces of tape a couple of inches apart. This way, if the glass does break, it's less likely to hurt the art and is a lot easier to clean up.

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

IME, framing anything nicely is very expensive. Sounds like a case where as much care as you can manage would be worth it.

If I were going to wrap an original piece of art in a custom glass frame to be shipped a long distance by other people, I'd ignore any wrong-sized boxes I had, and make a custom box for it out of *two* boxes larger than it. I'd cut a pair of cardboard pieces the size of the face and back. Then I'd wrap the art in bubble wrap, and put the cardboard on the front and back and tape it down. Then I'd do another layer of bubble wrap over the whole thing, and put it into a box I made that was just the size of the whole thing.

It'd take half an hour or so. But it'd probably protect the art against anything less than gross negligence on the part of the shipper.

[japlady.livejournal.com]

make sure you do NOT wrap it tightly.... this is a common error with folks, the bubble warp itself can exert enough tension to crack things... and "just" enough space is proably not a good idea.