Reclaim Cardboard Boxes As Yard Art

Everybody has cardboard these days — a lot of it, if we’ve been getting everything delivered. Other than just recycling it what can one do with it?

Make art with it, that’s what!

The technique here is to laminate layers of it into thicker board, then cut it out to make more useful objects. In my case, I have made display items and yard decorations.

• Cardboard Boxes, fairly clean and in good condition
• White (PVA) glue, such as Elmer's Glue-All, or equivalent
• Paint roller
• Some weights or heavy flat objects for pressing
• Various saws, routers or jigsaws for shaping

I tried a number of gluing solutions, and I found the best one was also about the cheapest: white PVA glue, also known as Elmer’s Glue-All This is about $12-15 a gallon at Lowe’s. It is a bit thick for our use here, it just needs a little thinning with water.

I thin it with about 3 parts glue to 1 part water, and stir it well. It should flow very freely, but still have some body to it.

Just about any decent-condition corrugated cardboard will do. The sturdier, the better. Notice that corrugated board has a ‘grain’, or direction of ribs.

Before one starts glueing, though, it must be cleaned and trimmed. This takes a few minutes.

Peel off any tape or stickers that won’t adhere well to white glue.

There will also be some odd flap corners or cutaways and creasing around the boxes’ folds.

Trim away any non-square flap corners that would create gaps, at least on the outer surfaces.

I use a cordless circular saw and my trusty, rusty straight edge to do this.

Once everything’s square, place out the first layer printed side up. (Or, nicest side down)

I will sometimes secure the first layer with a few pieces of masking tape, to keep them from sliding around.

It’s worth it to take a moment to figure out how each layer will fit, especially if you are working from a variety of box shapes and sizes.

You will want each layer to be rotated 90 degrees from the one beneath it. This adds a great deal of strength.

Pour some glue onto the board, and spread it out into a thin, even layer with a damp paint roller.

Side note: When I first did this, I found myself giggling: I had never used a paint roller to spread Elmer’s Glue before. What would my third grade teacher say?

Place the next layer boards at 90 degrees (perpendicular) to the first layer’s grain, and press into place.

Continue adding layers of board, gluing and rotating direction, until you have the thickness you need. Make sure the top layer is ‘nice’-side up.

Weight down the top layer, and let it dry for about 12 hours. I will often use a sheet of plywood in addition to the weights to hold it flat.

Gently take the weights off and see what you have.

This is a piece that has five layers of double wall board, and is about 1-1/4” thick.

It is now a lightweight, fairly rigid building material.

It cuts beautifully. And takes paint pretty well. Using a router leaves a bit of a rough edge, as one can see here, but a moment with a sander will clean that up.

I have used circular saws, routers and jigsaws on this material, and they all work well.

This is a piece I did a few years back for work (OK, I work for Lowe’s). It’s a 7-foot-long logo box with lights. It was hard-cut with a router. Yes, that’s me hiding behind it

Last year, I got a Maslow CNC router, and after some time, was able to attempt more ambitious projects.

This year, it came to pass that I had three daughters graduating: two from college, one from high school. So our yard got a sign!

I painted it on all sides with Kilz primer. It stood up pretty well to rain and the elements. And it looked great at night.

Technical note: I drew the elements in Adobe Illustrator, then exported them to SVG, and ran them through jscut.org to generate the gcode for the Maslow.

Halloween needed some fresh tombstones. These were sprayed with black Krylon around the words, then with Kilz primer for the white. They’ve also stood up pretty well in the rain.

Again, this was Illustrator => SVG => jscut => Maslow.

True, this wasn't really a project, but a technique I've used to enable a whole series of them. Amongst other things, I'm looking forward to expanding into making supersized game pieces, using microcontrollers to enable some animation effects to the horror of the neighbors, and of course, Christmas is coming. Christmas is always coming.

I'd like to see what other people do with this technique.