The sign of a truly creative mind is the ability to transform something ordinary into the extraordinary. Combined with the recent resurgence of upcycled products and an emphasis on a more simplistic design, even a cardboard box can serve as the perfect medium: recently, one artist even recreated a vintage Lincoln Continental from cardboard! No matter your talent level, you can find unlimited ways to turn product boxes into craft projects, games for children and even home décor!

Make New Friends
Cardboard makes a great—and forgiving—canvas for miniature Picassos! Encourage your kids to cut out animal shapes from old boxes, then paint or draw on them to make them as life-like as possible. Glue a popsicle stick to the back and you have an instant puppet! Your children can create an entire pretend zoo from the materials provided by a single product box. Since cardboard is much sturdier than construction paper, their creations will last much longer and can go on far more exciting adventures, and require minimal cleanup.
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Modern cardboard containers can do more than protect items on the way to consumers. These unique cardboard boxes can also serve as the basis for innovative and attractive Halloween costumes this fall. By recycling these materials, you can reinforce green-friendly values with your children while saving money on store-bought products. From traditional favorites to handmade conceptions that figuratively think outside the box, the team at Custom Boxes Now has compiled a list of five of the best costumes for this harvest season.

TOP COSTUME #1:  The Ever-Popular Robot
Square and rectangular boxes of different sizes form the basis for this traditional costume. Depending on your do-it-yourself skill, you can use duct tape or staples to connect the various parts of the costume. Best of all, your young child can decorate the outside with tempura paints to express their own robot vision. For older children, metallic spray paints can be used with supervision to create a more realistic version of these costumes. Dryer vents can provide bendable arms and legs that still look amazingly real for a homemade effort.

TOP COSTUME #2:  Dino Power
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The future of cardboard and corrugated packaging may rest with some of the giants of the delivery business. Amazon has already moved toward sending lightweight packages with the help of the U.S. Postal Service; now it may be contemplating hiring local delivery personnel to manage last-mile services in urban and rural areas. By working with these individuals on an as-needed basis, companies like Amazon can significantly reduce their costs for shipping items over extended distances. The packaging required for these new shipping methods, however, will have to meet even more stringent requirements to stand up to the potential inexperience of these new delivery providers.

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It’s safe to say that consumer behavior trends can and should have a large impact on the way companies package their products. Even the shape of your product packaging can have a huge influence on the way consumers perceive it, whether people find your goods in stores or buy them online and see the packaging for the first time when they open the box. The design of your packaging is crucial as well, including the way you position your logo and how you consider the general tastes of your target market. The materials you package your products in should also be chosen with the latest behaviors and trends of your target market in mind. If you want to keep up with your targeted consumer market, there are a few things you simply have to keep in mind to make sure all your bases are covered.

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Consumer experts are always talking about the latest retail packaging trends, and every year it seems things are evolving and advancing at a faster pace than the year before. With 2014 well underway, and retailers already gearing up for the next holiday shopping season, many branding and packaging trends have surfaced and shown themselves to be very important in the retail industry. We’ve compiled four of the top trends that retailers and industry insiders should definitely consider (if they aren’t already):

TREND #1: Benefiting from Compliance and Eco-Friendliness
From patient safety to environmental sustainability, retailers have more factors to consider in their packaging than ever before. Some of the latest trends in packaging and branding include more innovative unit-dosing designs on drug packaging, more eco-friendly food and beverage containers and more sustainable manufacturing processes. While these may seem like a lot of effort, the positive public perception to such changes can more than pay for the initial and ongoing investments. The key is to make the changes as publicly as possible in order to take advantage of the PR benefits.

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By Matt Ruggle

Sometimes there’s some confusion over what can be recycled and what can’t. For example, a corrugated cardboard box you get in the mail that contains that thing you ordered from Amazon.com last week can be recycled, but the lettuce you got from the grocery store last month cannot.

There’s a great multitude of rules and exceptions, and typically, your local recycling disposal truck driver will know the ins and outs. Unfortunately, those guys are notoriously difficult to catch when they’re in your area, so if you prefer, here’s a website that will tell you more than everything you need to know:

http://www.recyclingfactsguide.com

This site covers more than just cardboard, so please take the time to read everything pertinent to your own life. You’ll be a much better-informed consumer, and you’ll help make the world a better place.

If you’re interested in purchasing boxes with a high percentage of post-consumer recycled material, feel free to contact Custom Boxes Now!

By Matt Ruggle

Every now and then we like to share ideas with our readers on what they can do with old cardboard boxes. As it turns out, so does Martha Stewart.

She wrote an exhaustive list on her Radio Blog some time ago, telling seventy things – seventy! – you can do with your cardboard boxes at home. Among the notables are: diorama, ironing board, paint shield, coffin for Halloween, and dog house.

A corrugated cardboard pinata also made Martha’s list.

It’s nice to see the queen of at-home projects helping to get cardboard repurposed on a broad scale!

Read the entire list here:

http://theradioblog.marthastewart.com/2010/07/70-uses-for-cardboard-boxes.html

Of course, if projects aren’t your thing, we certainly encourage recycling cardboard through your proper local channels. Or, if you need some cardboard boxes freshly created just for you, perhaps with your own custom print, well, obviously, Custom Boxes Now! can help with that.