The manufacture of cardboard furniture - a new trend in the Western industry - gradually captured our country. Original, cheap and functional items made literally from garbage, really something special and non-standard, worthy of attention. Now on the Internet you can find a lot of different information describing and advertising cardboard furniture. A master class with detailed step-by-step instructions is also not uncommon. Schemes, drawings and patterns for furniture published in books and magazines for design. You can also get acquainted with the ideas that are already ready, so to speak, embodied in life and the numerous reviews of those who use it in their entirety. What is cardboard furniture?
They make it from the packaging corrugated cardboard according to a certain technology, over which engineering thought has worked, so this furniture is durable, and given the ease of manufacture and the unusual material, which gives unlimited possibilities for design, it’s also beautiful. A variety of forms of furniture, sometimes the most unexpected, are combined with the wide possibilities of decoration - painting, painting, decoupage, pasting with various natural materials, upholstery, etc.
The availability and low cost of building material, the low cost of other technological processes, the broadest possibilities in revealing the creative potential of the designer allow you to do this type of craft and make furniture from cardboard with your own hands, and if you like it and succeed, even organize your own business.
As already mentioned, ordinary packing cardboard is used for work. And if you have a box full of fridges or a TV, then let it become the “first sign” in future production, because one box will certainly not be enough, so you will have to walk to the nearest store and stock up on a lot of packaging containers.
Cardboard furniture. Necessary tools and materials
In addition to the main material - cardboard, you will also need: wrapping paper, a sharp knife for cutting cardboard, a glue gun, PVA glue, Moment glue, which is used for gluing large surfaces, wood glue, universal wallpaper glue, wood varnish, tracing paper, centimeter, pencil and brush, sanding paper.
In the manufacture of furniture, cardboard of different thicknesses is used. If you look at the slice, you can see a wavy layer, the thickness and strength of the cardboard depends on the number of these layers, and there are one to three of them. A thinner, single-layer cardboard is used for those sections of the structure where special strength is not required, for sealing the internal walls of the product, for round structures, etc. Cardboard furniture is glued from several layers, shifting them with stiffeners from strips of the same cardboard. It is important, when connecting a multilayer part, to take into account the direction of the interlayer waves. For greater strength, one detail is cut so that the waves are located along, and the next, across, etc.
Outside, the finished cardboard furniture is glued with brown or white Kraft wrapping paper, using wallpaper glue. This gives the structure a finished shape, makes the surface even and smooth and prepares for further decoration. This paper should not be cut with scissors, only with a knife.
What is the best way to cut cardboard?
For this purpose, a jigsaw is quite suitable, which will help save time and create a sharper, even edge at the part. Using a jigsaw, you can cut several layers of cardboard at once. When cutting with a knife, it is imperative to use a metal ruler, which is installed along the cut line.
Where to begin?
Start testing the technology with small forms, such as furniture for a child’s room. It can be a small table, a shelf or a sofa chair. In addition, the child himself can be involved in this activity, then furniture made together will become his favorite.
For example, to begin with, let's try to make a ottoman. Its dimensions will be 50 by 50 cm. To work, you will need sheets of cardboard, PVA glue, a glue gun, thin foam rubber for the side surfaces and thicker one for the seat, Kraft thick paper, upholstery fabric for the cover. From cardboard sheets, it is necessary to cut out square parts of 50x50 cm and strips of 50x5 cm for stiffeners. Glue the strips on one side of the cardboard squares at a distance of 15 cm from each other. Then we glue all the squares together so that the ribs lie inside the structure. There should be so many squares so that after connecting them together, our pouf would have the necessary dimensions and be a solid cube. We glue it on the sides with paper using PVA glue. Let the product dry well. Now on top we paste the seat also out of cardboard. We glue the side walls of the pouf with thin foam rubber, on the seat we put the part, cut out of a thicker material. On top, we padded the pouf with a cover of upholstery fabric, plush or faux fur sewn to its size.