Figuring out how to get the best bang for my buck

9×12 impasto palette knife painting
Flower Series No 86
Fine art giclee prints are available here

Last post, I wrote about painting larger paintings because the 4x4s are getting on my nerves. haha You can scroll down to read it, if you haven’t yet. So, the size I’ve decided to paint is 16×20, not too big, and not too small. There will be about 25 of them to start, and some 11x14s..maybe like 6 to 10? I already have the 11×14 canvas in my studio, but haven’t counted them yet.

What I don’t have on hand is shipping material, so before I can offer any larger paintings for sale, I had to order boxes, bubble wrap, and cardboard inserts. It took me HOURS to find the right company. I sat here with a calculator, and kept figuring out how to get the best bang for my buck. The shipping material ended up being $150 for 20 boxes, 100 inserts and enough bubble wrap to box up 7 paintings. I figured it’s a start, and the shipping is free on the bubble wrap, so I can buy more later.

I bought the bubble wrap from Ebay, and the boxes and cardboard inserts from The Boxery. I know a lot of artists buy from Uline, but I found it to be more expensive..$30 more expensive to be exact. No, thank you. I try to save whenever I can. The best price I found for 16×20 canvas was at Jerry’s because it was on sale for $65.00 for 20. I needed to buy some paint, too. When painting impasto, and large, I’m going to go through paint like crazy. So, I ordered some extra red, and 20 9×12 canvas. It came to $122. Not bad.  

I received a shipping notice the very next morning from all three companies. I’m pretty impressed with how fast they responded to my orders. Here’s hoping the quality is good, and the delivery goes smoothly. Speaking of delivery..UPS delivery charge is soooo expensive when ordering boxes. It’s going to cost me $45 to have 20 boxes and 100 21×17 inserts delivered from NYC. That seems ridiculous to me. I can have several large heavy boxes of art supplies delivered from Dick Blick, and it costs me nothing. Cardboard isn’t going to be that heavy. I looked everywhere, and couldn’t get a cheaper delivery quote. I even looked into buying locally to avoid the delivery charge, but it was cheaper to pay for delivery.

Bottom line: shipping material is super expensive when shipping larger paintings. It’s the number one thing that’s prevented me from painting larger in the past. That, and storage issues, but we’ll get to that later.