How I package and ship oil pastel paintings

Hi everyone! In this video I'm gonna share my tips for packaging and shipping oil pastel paintings so that they can arrive safely every time. Please excuse my voice, I'm sick again. Or it's a continuation of the previous one, who knows? But if it's too bad I will do a voiceover. This is the portrait that I'm gonna use to demonstrate this since I'm about to send it anyway, so we can get it ready together. You can see. This is how I store it after painting. I first let it cure for a few days and then put this glass in wrap. But it's not how I'm gonna send it. It's gonna be similar but not exactly like this. And you can see there was a lot of oil transfer, like a bunch of it, even though I let it cure for days. I didn't apply anything on it. You could use something like this. If you care about the longevity I would recommend a specific fixative like this one for oil pastels. It works fine. I'm just not a fan of using aerosols so if I can avoid it I will. This is something that I let the customer choose but in this case it's a gift for my mom so I'm not gonna put anything. And for my works, for the things that I keep, I also don't use anything. It's something that you can only use outdoors so I don't know how it will react right now because it's really really cold. So if you want to use it, first I will do some testing on some scrap pieces of paper. But yeah, let's do it. Materials and prep. We really need a clean space. Oil pastels are very prone to grabbing onto any lint or dust or anything that is flying around. So try to handle the paintings on a dust-free environment and on a clean surface. Same for whenever you are painting. I am personally quite careful I think and I vacuum daily and I still get particles sometimes. I remove the ones that are more annoying with tweezers at the end but if you do you have to be very careful and more often than not you end up disturbing a little bit the surface. So unless it's really annoying I will let it be. Like on the light parts of the skin I have to remove them but if it's somewhere dark and not too visible I will let it stay. We are gonna try our best not to touch the painting surface whenever there is oil pastel but we are still gonna handle this with clean and dry hands without moisturizer or natural oils or anything that could potentially disturb either the painting or just the paper. I don't want grease on the paper. We are gonna need a painting, some glassine paper like this, an acid-free plastic sleeve although the glassine will be protecting the painting but still acid-free is better, two foam boards to sandwich the painting in between and then some cardboard envelope, something to send it in. We will also need some weak tape like this, washi tape, something that is not strong and some regular tape. And for the envelope to reinforce the corners I like to use another tape that I will show you in the end. I'm sorry I don't have a lot of time to record so I'm doing this. I'm doing nap time and nap times are very short lately so I hope it will work. The first thing I'm gonna do is to cut a piece of glassine that covers the entire painting surface but that is not bigger than the paper itself. I do it like this because the person receiving it will likely want to take a look and then store it until they can frame it and because oil pastel can be so sticky some excess paint will get on the sheet of glassine and then once you put it back we won't need too much exactly to where it was before and it will be more difficult if we take it off completely. So I'm gonna put a piece that we can lift and put back and now we cut around. It doesn't have to be perfect, just need it to be well protected. Okay, it seems fine. So I'm gonna remove it very carefully from its previous glassine package then we're gonna stick it. I don't need to be careful removing this piece of glassine but I have to avoid any smearing. The paint should hold quite well but in case. Okay, as I lift. See? All of that is what we want to match when we put the glassine back and it wouldn't be possible to or it wouldn't be easy to do it if we delivered it like this. So I'm gonna carefully remove it, lift and before anything gets its way onto it we are gonna put glassine on top again. Okay, okay. So now we grab a little bit of washi tape and we can either put it on one side or put it on top. I want to make it easy for whoever is gonna receive it. And wrap it around on the other side and another one here. I will put a single one here on the bottom, on the center and she will only have to remove that one or to unstick it then she can just take a look like this fully and then carefully place it back and it will match. Nothing will smear and the painting will be fine until they can frame it if they choose to frame it. Last bit here on the center. I think I'm gonna add a couple more here because why not? This tape is so weak that it's super easy to lift and it has never caused me any issues with any papers. And now because I don't know how much oil is gonna to continue transfer I'm gonna wrap it once again with the excess glassine that I had left on the same sheet that I cut. Flip it and wrap it. A little bit of tape on the others as well. The cuts would be nicer if they were in front of my mom but I think she won't mind that I'm not cutting them like this. It looks better for sure but I really don't have time like they are gonna wake up anytime so who knows when I will be finishing this. Next step is to place the painting inside of the plastic sleeve. I like them to be acid free although I don't think it's too necessary in this case because the painting is already protected by two layers of glassine but it is. Now we will put it inside in case there is any humidity while traveling or rain or who knows. And now we have to sandwich this in between the two pieces of foam board. I like the foam boards to be at least half a centimeter bigger on each side. One centimeter is better but this is what I had and because my envelope is longer I cut them longer so on the bottom you can see here there is like half centimeter and on the top part there is a bunch more but it fits better my envelope. I don't want it to be roomy and I don't want it to be moving around. This is the painting with the boards and this is the size of the envelope. Let's see. Before you place the painting and everything inside what I do is to put the two foam boards and see how much wiggle room I have. They don't move much around but there is enough space for me to put the painting comfortably. So I think it will be fine. So now I'm gonna place in between them the painting and I really don't want it to move and because of the plastic it will definitely move if I don't secure it with some tape. So that's what I'm gonna do. We can use our washi tape or something stronger. I think either will be fine but the washi tape looks nicer, cuter. So I'm gonna go with that. And same on the bottom and another one on top. And now we sandwich it with the other one. Check this. It just glides and moves. So for this I'm gonna use the stronger tape and I'm gonna tape the corners. I'm cutting a bigger piece now like that. Hold and wrap around. And we repeat on all corners. And this is how it looks from the back. Not the nicest but it's well protected. Now we put this inside the cardboard envelope like that. This particular piece is a Christmas present for my parents so I'm not going to include things that I would say to a collector but if that was the case I would include some thank you cards or something extra. I've been adding some older drawings and stuff. I always like to add some notes on care. How to store it, how to frame it and how to handle it. If this was a soft pastel instead of oil pastels I like to add a piece of a new, not this but a new kneaded eraser. Just a tiny bit so that in case there is any lint or any lint gets into the paint you just make some cone or a little ball with a tip and just pick, pick and grab the lint and remove it. And let's close it then. I think this is how you close it but I don't care because I'm gonna have a bunch of tape to reinforce all the corners and all the borders. You see there's always something open and I like it to be very secure. Maybe you find better envelopes than I do. This may wake up the baby, yay! There is this opening here of center and I don't think it will open but I also don't want to risk it so for that one I'm gonna use regular office tape. And for the closure here that is not very safe I think, well I could put one of these but they are not wide enough so more tape. Not particularly pretty but effective. And now it's ready to write the addresses on and to send. I cannot guarantee that this is the best way to send a painting but it's what I've always done and so far I've never had an issue. I hope this was useful and that it gave you some answers and if you have any ideas to improve this please let us know in the comments. Bye bye! I'm sure baby's awake now. He's coming.