so much for so much time in explaining everything we need to know about cardboard and painstakingly taking all the pictures to show. Well now holy moly! I wish I would have seen this before mothers day when I started my walk thru the cardboard forest lol. But the one thing I can say is that thru my own trial and error I discovered the things you talk about here! That makes me feel wonderful. It is so much fun to get into these projects and see where they take you. I had no idea really where my project was going until I started cutting and shaping the box...I still look at it and think...huh I wonder what else I can build! I am cardboard empowered...and obviously not alone! Thanks so much for sharing! I am inspired by your passion for cardboard!!!! I collect it for "some future craft" but never quite know what to do with it. Now I do. But I can't start until I rebuild my stash. When we were on vacation last year for 2 weeks, my in laws "cleaned up" my house, including my stash. It was all the way upstairs, behind a door, on top of a shelf, neatly organized in a basket...and they STILL decided to remove it and put it in the recycling :o( Have you tried glueing brown packaging paper to cardboard creation to make it smooth for painting? I keep trying but it stretches and creates folds and bubbles and