Holiday Shipping...

A fellow artist mentioned that the price of shipping supplies is becoming outrageous for their framed art; luckily I’ve always managed to find cheap materials. While some of the following ideas don’t really support the ‘handmade’ mentality, they do help cut the cost of packaging:

1.  Try your local dollar shop for packs of bubble envelopes, mailing labels, packing tape and bubble wrap. The big chains seem to have the best selection at the lowest prices but do keep in mind that since dollar stores have a little bit of everything, you may need to try more than one location to get the amount of materials you need for a holiday seasons worth of shipping.
2.  Another great source of lower priced shipping materials (while not as cheap as a dollar store) would come from places like Wal-Mart and Target. While they don’t have prices as low as dollar stores, they usually have larger pack sizes (think envelopes in packs of 10 and gigantic rolls of bubble wrap) and more stock on hand meaning you don’t need to try more than one location to get everything you need.
3. Visit the after holiday sale event, for tissue paper, tags, boxes and ribbon during this time you can find super discounted pricing on packing supplies and boxes.
4.  Also, try your local shipping offices and see if they have any cheap shipping supplies. While most are overpriced, some shippers do offer very cheap supplies online to get you to use their online shipping tools, it’s worth checking into.

 I’m lucky - mailing jewelry is far easier and cheaper than mailing most other types of artwork. Most of my items are small, lightweight, fit in the smallest size shipping box and can be sent with a relatively small amount of postage. I hope this little list helps reduce your shipping cost!