Cardboard plays an important role in human life and activity. Now it is impossible to imagine our life without cardboard packaging boxes. Often, after the delivery of products or household appliances, they are simply thrown away and recycled at the plants, but creative people found cardboard for another use.
Remember how hard it is to raise furniture to the upper floors, you have to hire a truck and movers to cope with the delivery of furniture. After several years of use, the furniture becomes boring, its location in the room bothers, I want changes in the environment. However, wooden furniture is very expensive and has to be stored for many years, despite the changes in fashion and the desire to decorate the room in a new way.
Original version of furniture
Fortunately, there is an unexpected alternative to the usual stationary furniture. These are various cardboard shelves. It’s easy to make them yourself, and the manufacturing process is creative and interesting. If only professional specialists - carpenters and joiners can work with wood or chipboards, then absolutely everyone will cope with paper. You can collect packing cardboard gradually or purchase new sheets in hardware stores. To connect the parts you will need an adhesive tape or glue.
In the article, we will consider how to make cardboard shelves with your own hands, their variety will surprise even experienced craftsmen. These are large book shelves, hanging shelves of various configurations, angular semicircular and even crafts for storing shoes and small items in a closet, an organizer for stationery and papers, which can be placed both at home and in the office. And what amazing shelves can be made for kids in children's rooms? The main thing is to have imagination and the ability to draw straight or rounded lines, the rest is a matter of technology, which you will meet in our article.
The benefits of cardboard crafts
Doing cardboard shelves with your own hands is, first of all, profitable in terms of profitability, especially if you have boxes preserved from packing goods or you work in a supermarket. In addition to low cost, corrugated packaging cardboard furniture has the following advantages:
- You can come up with a unique design according to your drawings, which fits perfectly into the interior of the room;
- Self-made shelves are very practical, because they are lightweight, they can be quickly moved from place to place, if necessary, taken apart and taken to the cottage, placed inside the dressing room or in the closet, removed to another room in case of repair, etc.
- there is no need to buy expensive tools that are used when working with wooden structures;
- it’s interesting to make not only smooth shelves of cardboard, you can bend the material with your own arc or in a full circle, design internal drawers, attach handles to them, collect as many compartments as you need;
- if shelves or other cardboard furniture will not come in contact with water, then the products will be quite durable;
- cardboard furniture can be safely placed in a nursery, as the material is environmentally friendly, does not contain toxic and hazardous substances.
Cons of cardboard furniture
Do-it-yourself wall-mounted cardboard shelves are not recommended in bathrooms and toilets, on open verandas and balconies. These are rooms with a high probability of the appearance of steam and dampness. Cardboard from moisture can swell and deform, which will lead furniture to a deplorable state.
Due to the severity of the shelf can bend down, so you have to strengthen them, adding several layers of corrugated cardboard to gain rigidity.
Since corrugated cardboard is easily flammable, it is necessary to protect products from fire, placing furniture away from a stove or fireplaces.
Materials for work
To design cardboard shelves with your own hands (photos are presented in the article), you need to prepare the following materials necessary for work:
- Corrugated packaging board in flat sheets. It is advisable to choose the most dense material. If it is thin, you will have to put together several layers with glue.
- Adhesive tape or glue. Experienced craftsmen are advised to use the "Moment". It is thick and does not penetrate the structure of the paper, unlike its counterparts. Details of the shelves are perfectly fixed, and quite quickly.
- Hair dryer. It is used in cases where you need to quickly dry the glued elements of the workpiece.
- For pasting the joints and end parts of the shelf, thin cardboard, kraft paper or tracing paper is used. It is recommended to tear it with your hands before sticking it on the surface of the cardboard.
- Pencil, long metal meter or tape measure. Using drawing tools, you can draw the shape of a future bookcase directly on cardboard.
- Sandpaper is needed to clean the edges of the cut cardboard.
- If you cut the details on cardboard in one layer, then it will be enough to use a sharp clerical knife. Be sure to place a plank underneath so as not to cut the table.
- If you need to cut multiple layers, it is possible to use an electric jigsaw.
- A dull knife or a thin metal plate. With their help, you can gently bend cardboard in the right places so that the fold is even.
Features of work
When making do-it-yourself shelves from cardboard on the wall, pay attention to the symmetry of the craft so that it is stable and does not warp to one side.
When assembling a rigid structure, several sheets are perpendicular to one another. So, if one sheet has wavy lines of paper horizontally, then the next layer is attached already with vertical waves.
Remember that the more cross members make, the harder it will be the design. Some craftsmen assemble shelves for books from cardboard with their own hands even without glue, and by making slits in the horizontal and transverse parts. It remains only to assemble the shelf by inserting one sheet of cardboard into another with a simple touch of a hand. This is most often done for portable temporary furniture, as it is easy to disassemble and move to another place.
It is believed that light cardboard is less durable than dark. Also, before buying, check the thickness of the material and the number of wavy layers that are clearly visible at the cut points.
Please note that corrugated cardboard on one side has a smoother surface, which is why it is placed on the front side of the furniture, and the rough one is hidden inside.
How to make a cardboard shelf with your own hands?
First, we will figure out how to make a simple rack, consisting of several cardboard boxes interconnected. Identical rectangular elements are glued over the end with sheets of paper to cover uneven sections. Of them, boxes are laid out on top of each other, forming the original form of cardboard shelves. With your own hands, expose them both horizontally, lying on top of each other, and vertically.
The boxes are connected together by tape or special plastic or aluminum holders. So that the shelves do not slip and do not mix, they are interconnected by glue or double-sided tape.
You can paste over the edges with colored tape, choosing bright colors for the original design, for example, red and yellow, green or blue.
You can decorate external surfaces in different ways - with a cloth or paper, paint with paints or cover with acrylic varnish.
Craft for shoes
It is often quite problematic to find the necessary pair of shoes in the pantry. You have to dump all the contents out and first look for one shoe, and then the second. A convenient shoe shelf made of cardboard will facilitate efforts. Do it yourself with your own hands quickly and easily.
Divide the cardboard sheet into three equal parts, making measurements with a ruler. The depth of the shelf is measured by the largest size of men's shoes so that the shoes do not look out. Then, using a blunt knife, bend the workpiece in the places of the drawn lines and collect the triangular part of the rack.
Join the joints with strips of tape in several places. Wrap the front slice of the cardboard with wide color tape, folding the ribbon in half around the edge. Then assemble the stable structure. For convenience, you can cut long intermediate strips of cardboard and already attach parts to them with glue. Such a shelf for shoes made of cardboard with your own hands can be made for the lower tier of the dressing room or put inside a large closet in the hallway. Original crafts can be displayed in the hallway or taken to the cottage, put on the balcony or in the children's locker room at the school for sports shoes. In the triangular compartments, you can put any small items, ordering their location in the house.
DIY cardboard hanging shelf
Shelf on the wall can also be created from corrugated cardboard, and absolutely any shape. The simplest option is to connect several layers of cardboard of the same shape between each other and, by drilling holes at the same distance from the edge, stretch the rope. Then the whole structure is suspended on a nail or a screw screwed into the wall of the room.
It can be dense multi-layered cell, as in the photo below. To make such an unusual design, they take a whole pack of corrugated cardboard, fasten them together with Moment glue, and cut a shelf with a jigsaw according to the drawn pattern.
The end part of the slice is decorated with white cardboard. Ready-made shelves can be displayed in different versions - one above the other, next to the table surface or by placing them like real honeycombs, as in our sample above.
Wood on a cardboard wall
Do-it-yourself cardboard shelf on the wall can come up with the original form, depending on the design decision in the design of the room. In our next sample, it looks like a branching tree. It is made according to the drawing and is assembled in a horizontal position on the floor of the room. For work, prepare several long strips of corrugated cardboard, consisting of two layers. First, the shape of the back wall is cut out. It can be made from cardboard in one layer to facilitate construction.
Then attach the sides with tape or pieces of paper, bending them according to the contours of the tree. Structural rigidity is given by short transverse shelves, which are tightly inserted between long strips and fixed on one side and with strips of adhesive tape or paper (tracing paper). You can use a glue gun.
On the lower part of the craft, where the trunk of our tree is located, the front part is additionally strengthened, completely covering the cavity between the strips.
stained wood surface in the selected color and varnish. You can paste over with colored paper or self-adhesive.
Shelf for kids room
To make shelves for books or toys in the nursery, come up with an interesting cut for corrugated cardboard sheets. In our next sample, apple outlines are used. The back wall is a whole apple, and the inner partition is a thin strip having a width of 10 cm and contours repeating the outer part of the cutting.
The front panel is already transmitting all the details of shelves and the outer parts of the shelf. Bottom bracket is made wider to the regiment gained rigidity. It can be strengthened with several layers of cardboard by gluing them together. The same goal is pursued by short stiffeners, which are attached between the three main parts of the apple structure. They are all glued parallel to each other and are the same size.
Further work is done on the actual shelves of the rack in the shape of an apple. Make sure that all corners are straight and cut precisely to size. You can paste over the rack with colored paper or wallpaper to match the color of the walls of the room.
Shelves in the corner of the room
It is easy to make a corner shelf from cardboard with your own hands from a stack of sheets glued together. It turns out to be incredibly strong and quite weighty, so you can not worry that the bookcase or bookshelves will fall. Triangular shelves are cut in the same size and glued to the racks. In addition, strengthen them with tape.
It is convenient if a drawer with a handle will be mounted in the rack. It is made of cardboard in one layer, so that it can be easily removed. Shelving with semicircular shelves looks interesting. You can make a carved, with curls or wavy edges. You need to act on the template cut separately so that the weight of the shelf is the same.
Cardboard procedure
All types of work are performed in a certain sequence:
- preparation of the drawing and transferring dimensions to cardboard;
- with a clerical knife cut out all the details;
- sand the edges with sandpaper;
- glue parts with a glue gun or glue "Moment", you can use durable tape;
- if cardboard is assembled from several layers, then use a press from old magazines or books;
- carved edges with corrugated paper can be pasted over with paper or tracing paper, putty and smooth the edge;
- the surface is usually pasted over with a cloth or self-adhesive.
As you can see, making corrugated board furniture is quick and easy. This is a cheap way to create original shelving, hanging shelves on a wall or for cornering. Try to make such pieces of furniture yourself! Good luck