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 in factories, but creative people have found other uses for cardboard.
Remember how hard it is to lift 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 you, you want a change in the environment. However, wooden furniture is very expensive and has to be stored for many years, despite changes in fashion and the desire to decorate a room in a new way.
Original version of furniture
Fortunately, there is an unexpected alternative to the usual stationary furniture. This is a variety of shelves fromcardboard. It is not difficult to make them with your own hands, and the manufacturing process is creative and interesting. If only professional specialists - carpenters and joiners can work with wood or chipboard, then absolutely everyone can handle paper. You can collect packing cardboard gradually or purchase new sheets from hardware stores. To connect the parts, you will need 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 bookcases, hanging shelves of various configurations, corner semicircular and even crafts for storing shoes and small items in the 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 technique, which you will learn in our article.
Advantages of cardboard crafts
Making cardboard shelves with your own hands, first of all, is beneficial in terms of economy, especially if you have left boxes from packing goods or you work in a supermarket. In addition to being cheap, corrugated packaging cardboard furniture has the following advantages:
you can come up with a unique design according to your drawings, which will perfectly fit into the interior of the room;
- self-made shelves are very practical, because they are light, they can be quickly moved from place to place, if necessarydisassemble and take to the country, place inside the dressing room or in a closet, put away in another room in case of repair, etc.;
- no need to buy expensive tools that are used when working with wooden structures;
- it is interesting to make not only even cardboard shelves, with your own hands you can bend the material in an arc or a full circle, design internal drawers, attach handles to them, assemble as many compartments as you need;
- if shelves or other cardboard furniture does not come into contact with water, then the products will be quite durable;
- cardboard furniture can be safely put in the children's room, as the material is environmentally friendly, does not contain toxic and hazardous substances.
Cons of cardboard furniture
Do-it-yourself wall shelves made of cardboard are not recommended to be placed in bathrooms and toilets, on open verandas and balconies. These are rooms with a high probability of steam and dampness. Cardboard from moisture can swell and deform, which will lead to furniture in a deplorable state.
Heavy shelves can bend down, so they have to be strengthened by adding several layers of corrugated cardboard to acquire rigidity.
Because corrugated cardboard is highly flammable, it is important to protect products from fire by placing furniture away from stoves or fireplaces.
Materials for work
To construct cardboard shelves with your own hands (photos are presented in the article), you need to prepare the following materials necessary forwork:
- Corrugated packaging cardboard in flat sheets. It is advisable to choose the densest material. If it is thin, you will have to put together several layers with glue.
- Scotch tape or glue. Experienced craftsmen advise using the "Moment". It is thick and does not penetrate the structure of the paper, unlike its counterparts. Shelf parts are perfectly fixed, and quite quickly.
- Hair dryer. It is used in cases where it is necessary to dry the glued elements of the workpiece faster.
- For gluing the joints and end parts of the shelves use thin cardboard, craft paper or tracing paper. 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. With the help of drawing tools, you can draw the shape of the future rack directly on the cardboard.
- Sandpaper will be needed to clean up the edges of the cut cardboard.
- If you cut out the details on cardboard in one layer, then it will be enough to use a sharp stationery knife. Be sure to put a plank underneath so as not to cut the table.
- If you need to cut several layers at once, you can use an electric jigsaw.
- A dull knife or thin metal plate. With their help, you can carefully bend the cardboard in the right places so that the fold is made evenly.
Features of work
When making your own cardboard shelves on the wall, pay attention to the symmetry of the craft so thatit was stable and did not warp to one side.
When assembling a rigid structure, several sheets are arranged 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 you make the crossbars, the more rigid the structure will be. Some craftsmen assemble cardboard book shelves with their own hands, even without glue, but by making cuts in the horizontal and transverse parts. It remains only to assemble the shelf by inserting one sheet of cardboard into another with a simple push of the hand. This is most often done for portable temporary furniture, as it is easy to disassemble and move to another location.
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 has a smoother surface on one side, so it is placed on the front side of the furniture, and the rough one is hidden inside.
How to make a DIY cardboard shelf?
First, let's deal with the implementation of a simple rack, consisting of several interconnected cardboard boxes. Identical rectangular elements are glued on the end part with sheets of paper to cover uneven cuts. Of these, boxes are laid out on top of each other, forming the original form of cardboard bookshelves. With your hands, set them both horizontally, lying downon the other, and vertically.
The boxes are connected to each other with adhesive tape or special plastic or aluminum holders. To prevent the shelves from slipping and mixing, they are connected to each other with glue or double-sided tape.
You can glue the edges with colored tape, choosing bright colors for originality of the design, for example, red and yellow, green or blue.
Exterior surfaces can be decorated in different ways - with cloth or paper, painted with paints or covered with acrylic varnish.
Shoe Craft
It is often quite problematic to find the right pair of shoes in the pantry. We have to dump all the contents out and look first for one shoe, and then the second. A convenient shoe shelf made of cardboard will facilitate the efforts. Do it yourself quickly and easily.
Divide a sheet of cardboard 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 peek out. Then, using a dull knife, bend the workpiece in the places of the drawn lines and assemble the triangular part of the rack.
Attach the joints with tape strips in several places. Wrap the front cut of the cardboard with colored wide tape, folding the tape in half around the edge. Then assemble a stable structure. For convenience, you can cut out long intermediate strips of cardboard and attach parts to them with glue. Such a do-it-yourself cardboard shoe rack can be made for the lower tier of the dressing room or putinside a large closet in the hallway. You can put the original craft in the hallway or take it with you to the country house, put it on the balcony or in the children's locker room at the school for sports shoes. You can put any small items in triangular compartments, arranging their location in the house.
Hanging shelf made of cardboard with your own hands
A shelf on the wall can also be created from corrugated cardboard, and of absolutely any shape. The easiest option is to connect several layers of cardboard of the same shape to each other and, having made holes at the same distance from the edge, stretch the rope. Then the whole structure is hung on a nail or screw screwed into the wall of the room.
It can be dense multi-layer honeycombs, 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 out a shelf with a jigsaw according to the drawn template.
The end part of the cut is made out with white cardboard. Ready-made shelves can be displayed in different ways - one above the other, next to the table surface or placed like a real honeycomb, as in our sample above.
Tree on cardboard wall
You can come up with an original shape for a do-it-yourself cardboard shelf on the wall, depending on the design decision when decorating the room. In our next sample, it looks like a branched tree. It is compiled according to the drawing and assembled in a horizontal position on the floor of the room. Get a few ready for work.long strips of corrugated cardboard, consisting of two layers. First of all, the shape of the back wall is cut out. It can be made from cardboard in one layer for ease of construction.
Then attach the sides with tape or pieces of paper, bending them according to the contours of the tree. The rigidity of the structure is given by short transverse shelves, which are tightly inserted between long strips and fixed on one side and the other 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, they additionally strengthen the front part, completely covering the cavity between the stripes.
The surface of the wood is painted in the chosen color and varnished. Can be pasted over with colored paper or self-adhesive.
Children's room shelf
To make shelves for books or toys in the children's room, come up with an interesting cutting pattern for corrugated cardboard sheets. Our next sample uses the outline of an apple. The back wall is a whole apple, and the inner partition is a thin strip with a width of 10 cm and contours that repeat the outer part of the cutting.
The front panel already conveys all the details of the shelves and the outer parts of the rack. The lower bar is made wider so that the shelf acquires structural rigidity. It can be strengthened with several layers of cardboard by gluing them together. The same goal is pursued by short stiffeners that are attached between threethe main details of the design of the apple. They are all glued parallel to each other and have the same size.
Further work is done on the actual shelves of the rack in the shape of an apple. Make sure all corners are straight and cut 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
A do-it-yourself corner shelf made of cardboard is easy to make from a pack of sheets glued together. It turns out to be incredibly strong and quite weighty, so you don’t have to worry that the rack with books or vases will fall. Triangular shelves are cut to the same size and attached to the racks with glue. Reinforce them with additional tape.
It is convenient if a drawer with a handle is mounted in the rack. It is made of cardboard in one layer so that it can be easily removed. Shelves with semicircular shelves look interesting. You can make carved, with curlicues or wavy edges. You need to act according to the template cut out separately so that the weight of the shelves is the same.
How to work with cardboard
All types of work are performed in a certain sequence:
- preparing the drawing and transferring dimensions to cardboard;
- cut out all the details with a clerical knife;
- smooth the edges with sandpaper;
- glue the parts with a glue gun or Moment glue, you can use strong adhesive tape;
- if cardboard is assembled from several layers, then use a press from old magazines or books;
- carved edges with wavy paper can be pasted over with paper or tracing paper, puttied and level the edge;
- the surface is usually pasted over with a cloth or self-adhesive.
As you can see, making corrugated cardboard furniture is quick and easy. This is a cheap way to create original shelving, hanging shelves for a wall or corner. Try to make similar pieces of furniture yourself! Good luck!
