Cardboard boxes show up at our house with great frequency. Most of them aren't something I comment about or consider making something out of. Then once in a while we'll get unassembled furniture. Those boxes are on another level. At least two sides are huge sheets of cardboard and it gets me wondering what can I build with that?

One of those cardboard crafts became the Halloween/gremlin tree I mentioned in a Polytechnicast episode. It lived a good while as a long term art installation in our house.

Here's my recent cardboard craft, art portfolio cases.

Giving a tour of curiosities in my office to my 7yo who likes to wonder what's up with the stuff in my home office we explored my art portfolios. Art portfolios are an OK option for storage of large artwork I want to keep but am not framing and displaying.

Then I think: hey wait a minute, what a useful project. It kept for months as an idea until I noticed a folded bit of cardboard that protected a book I ordered. The construction of the package had multiple parts but only a few. The whole outside was one big folded section. That was what led me to try this design.