Running out of room for display purposes. I looked over my desk and saw 25-30 boxes of completed kits or partial stages. I sorted and went from 6 piles to the ceiling to 1. Then, an ingenious idea. Why am I keeping the boxes? Box art? I love the pictures. So, I emptied all the boxes of spare parts, cut up sprues and placed everything in a little plastic box I got at Target. Put all the unused decals in a second box. Now, 2 very organized boxes. What about the model boxes? Simple, borrowed the paper cutter at work. Carefully cut the tops of the boxes so I have boxart. Also, any pictures on the side that were completed models, I cut. What to do with a pile of boxart? I got sheet protectors, put each one carefully in the sheet protector and placed all of them in a large three ring binder. Now, I can sit and page through the box art and look at the cool pictures, I can actually frame some and put them on the wall and I have tremendous room now. Even the donor of half of my kids DNA, my wonderful wife thought it was a great idea and looked awesome.
So, all of those boxes? You may throw them away. I like the boxart, I saved it. Hope this helps those organization freaks. I guess this will be received as well as my recent post about using roof shingles as bases for planes. Update on that, they look awesome. My son, an art student in college, thought they provided great contrast to the models and the colors. So there, gottcha!
Thats a good space saving idea Im starting to run out of room and may need to do just that. Keeping boxes for unbuilt and built is becoming a chore. I really dont want to use the attic or garage because Im afraid of what Arizona summers do to plastic.
I’ve done some of that but I’m afraid that some of the kits I get, I’ll never build (you know, out of 250+ kits, the odd model or so), and once the box is cut up and destroyed, many would be buyers/swappers would be less interested…
i have very few boxes with only one model inside. almost all have 2, some 3. first thing i do is de-sprue every thing. example: 1 p-47 in box loose with decals & clear parts in small plastic bag. second p-47 in same kind of clear plastic bag that after market decals come in, such as aeromaster or tecmod. result: one kit loose and ready to be worked, one in a nice tidy package “on deck”. (baseball reference not carrier). might sound a bit too anal, which it is, but it goes a long way to saving space. it works mostly because i have few single copies. 1 mc 205 but 13 spits. 1 il-2 but 10 p-51s. 1hellcat but 8 109s (and counting). you get the idea. besides, i get to fondle each and every part of every kit. a big part of the fun for me. do i need help? yes i do! but i don’t want it! modeling is my drug of choice. how’s THAT for obsessive compulsive?
One thing I need to start doing again is take my un-build and semi-build Kits out of the Boxes and put them into zip-loc bags and store them that.
Decals and instruciton sheets go into another Box.
Standard procedure for me before a move, reduces space. Don’t care about box-art unless for reference purpose. Wife hates it because i manage to sneak smaller kits into convenient spaces in the moving boxes, Cups + 3 Kits. [}:)]
Most of my garage-kits are also packaged the same way, so it is nothing unsual for me to grab a bag and up-end it onto the work-table.
Yer all a pack if sick puppies. You need treatment.[:0]
But then again, why does all of your mad ramblings sound sooo familiar, and oh so reasonable?
It’s time for my medication again…
I keep boxes mainly for the storage convenience, but once the decision is made to make the model, the sprue gets the chop, the box gets the chop (saving any outstanding art or reference pics) and the whole lot gets the plastic organiser box treatment.
As has been said, I also love to run my fingers through all the plastic bits (chuckling maniacally) and dream about the plans for that model…
Heh heh heh…
Cheers
LeeTree