A nest lined with bubble wrap: hoarding tips from a 'perfume packaging magpie'.

It is over eight years now since I wrote about the endearing and slightly bemusing practice of popping a sweet in with a perfume package - standard practice on Makeupalley swaps back in the day. Since then the business of sending parcels of perfume and the actual packaging used to do so have continued to fascinate. I have blogged about insulation tape and bubble wrap and a little cardboard box that shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic on multiple scent carrying missions. And I am still fascinated, despite the fact that my perfume sending of late has been radically curtailed: as regular readers know, I don't attempt it at all overseas anymore, and even domestically I worry a lot, as you are only meant to post full unopened bottles in their original packaging, preferably cellophane-wrapped according to the rather draconian post office nearest to me. In vain did I try to explain that these days not all perfumes ARE cellophane-wrapped, even if I were ever minded to send a bottle that was BNIB, as they say. In fact I am not sure I have ever posted a single thing that HAS met the official Royal Mail guidelines...!

Yet notwithstanding my dwindling postal habit, I am still hoarding suitable bits of packaging like a good 'un - or like a magpie. THE Perfume Magpie is obviously someone else altogether, with her own blog - her magpie tendencies doubtless relate to being attracted to perfume and stashing that away. And a magpie might not in fact be the correct term for my own behaviour, because bubble wrap and envelopes are not exactly the bright, eye-catching trinkets traditionally associated with this opportunistic bird. Moreover, according to an article on the Discover Wildlife site, entitled 'Debunking myths about magpies' (would you believe there are quite a few myths, beyond their alleged bling-nicking proclivities?) that isn't even true either. It seems to be a much misunderstood bird. On balance, perhaps I am more like a squirrel, then!

The avatar of The Perfume Magpie!

So, you may be wondering, to what in the way of packaging am I drawn exactly? A considerable array of things is the answer, starting with bubble wrap, that classically protective wrapping that augments the intrinsic bubble wrap of a padded envelope. There is always a trade off between appropriate levels of swaddling and the ensuing fatness of package and associated postage costs, but I usually come down emphatically - and pneumatically - on the side of wrapping.

Pictured in the basket at the top of the post (sorry, nest!) are some random scraps of bubble wrap of varying widths and lengths, all potentially useful to our cause. But before I go on I must point out that not all bubble wrap is created equal. As I mentioned in my 2012 post on the subject, the ne plus ultra of all bubble wrap formats, the jewel in the crown - to briefly reprise our magpie musings - is the ready-made bubble wrap pouch or pocket, with handy foldy over flap, complete with traces of adhesive, if you are very lucky. Could a more perfect receptacle be devised for neatly enclosing and protecting a clutch of decants or samples?

Also featured in that post is another variant on the same theme - I still don't know the definitive word for this material six years on!, but back then I thought that it might be some kind of polystyrene. It is opaque and a bit stretchy, and does the job pretty well too. I may be wrong, but I associate this second pouch style with the USA. Can anyone confirm if it is a common bagging material over there?

Then I also squirrel away assorted plastic bags like this - they aren't particularly aesthetic, and offer zero padding, but come in handy as a leakproof layer at the very least, for which there is much to be said.

Still on the theme of bags, I also keep and recycle any decorative drawstring bags I am sent, as these make a nice form of gift packaging, again with minimal protective value. Though saying that, the velvet and suedette ones are a lot better in that regard than the organza, while the mighty white faux leather ones from Micallef are best of all in the padding department!

Moving on from bubble wrap, bubble wrap bags, and bags of other materials, I also collect small boxes. I have many more than this example, but I suspect I may have hidden a whole bunch of boxes inside a bigger box and then gone and hidden that somewhere(!) for so-called 'safekeeping'.

Speaking of bigger boxes, a special tribute should be paid to the trusty Jo Malone box, which is ideal for a large collection of slim decants or samples. There is more inherent sound proofing with a box than a bag, so it is easier to conceal the incriminating fluid nature of your shipment(!). This particular specimen is much travelled, and its sturdiness and rigidity means it still has many more miles in it.

Ditto this Hermes box, a much rarer animal, with its striking orange livery. The mini orange sleeves that house Hermessences samples - of which I am sure we have all had a few in our time, thanks to the generosity of Hermes stores the world over! - are also handy for stowing the Hermessence tubes they originally contained, or other long thin samples. ;)

And no review of packaging for posting perfume would be complete without a mention of the humble Jiffy bag, or Bubble Mailer, for readers across the pond. I have a drawer absolutely rammed full of the things: in every size imaginable, some more padded than others, some in white and some in fawn, some with ID8000 labels already affixed, some without. I am often tempted to pop a reused envelope with the hazard label on it into the post box, but I believe you are supposed to have the thing scanned in a post office, even though this does invariably invite a barrage of awkward questions!

So there you have it - a house groaning with packaging materials, and an ever growing reluctance to post perfume. I also have a bowlful of appropriate postal sweets as it happens...maybe on the increasingly rare occasions when I do send scented packages, I should pop one in for old times' sake...

Please do tell me if you are also a packaging magpie - or squirrel - and if so, what are your materials / formats of choice?!

Another Unsung Hero Of The Swap Scene - Bubble Wrap

Seasoned perfume swappers think nothing of shipping perfume many thousands of miles to fellow fumeheads standing by to give them a loving home - or to parcel them up and send them on their way again if they don't appeal... I have written several posts about issues with leaky or otherwise tricky atomisers, and it is self-evident that when choosing receptacles in which to send a swap item, only the most airtight and well-behaved vials need apply. Assuming the container is sound, the next step is to seal it securely with electrical insulation tape, as detailed in my previous "unsung hero" post. There is the screw thread part, the bit where the top fits onto the base, and even the hole in the atomiser mechanism to consider. The conscientious swapper may swathe the decant so comprehensively in tape that it looks like a mummy - or a cowboy - as noted in my post on "bias cut" tape designs.

But there are several more stages to go in the making up of a leakproof parcel. For example, I often place the taped atomisers into polythene bags before swaddling them generously in bubble wrap and placing them in a Jiffy bag, which is itself a padded envelope lined with bubble wrap - whence the US term for these of "bubble mailer".

This "double bubble" approach is perhaps the most common way in which perfumistas wrap their swap items, though some swappers - with standards of presentation as high as those of safety - will go on to wrap the bubble wrapped package in coloured tissue or other styles of gift paper. This has the additional benefit of putting intrusive customs officials off the scent, as it were - on the basis that only the most hardhearted and "Jobsworthy" amongst them are going to rip off such obvious and pristine gift trappings on the offchance that the package may contain a concealed weapon or one of the myriad of other hazardous goods on their hit list.

In my experience though, bubble wrap remains the packaging material of choice, and perfumistas who engage in regular swapping will get through a ton of the stuff in the course of a typical year. Oh okay, maybe not a ton, because admittedly it doesn't weigh very much, but a goodly amount in volume terms, certainly. And what is really handy is that bubble wrap is something you never need to buy - regular top up supplies just miraculously appear pretty much every time you buy an item by mail order.

The best "harvest" of fresh bubble wrap is yielded by larger or heavier items such as electronic goods, though some of these may also come ensconced in rigid polystyrene, which is no good to us fumeheads. That said, their close relative, the polystyrene chip, is a good substitute for bubble wrap, though the chips have an annoying habit of either sticking to your hands because of their static charge, or conversely skittering all over the work surface and/or floor.

And even within the category of bubble wrap proper, there is a qualitative hierarchy, indeed one of the reasons why this post is somewhat delayed is because I was tracking down one or two remaining species, with a view to photographing them.

The award for the most useless type must go to large gauge bubble wrap, which increases the volume of the wrapped item by a factor of 500, and makes it damn near impossible to insert the swap package into an envelope, whether a bubble mailer or not.

The "standard" and most useful type of bubble wrap has smaller blisters that are no more than 3mm in height when fully inflated (I just measured a classic piece, so you can take this figure as pretty accurate). It comes in large sheets that may be cut to size. Ideally, it will not already have any Sellotape on it, for sure as eggs are eggs, once you start tugging that darn tape off, the bubble wrap will distort and tear into wretchedly ragged shapes that are frankly not socially acceptable on the swap scene, even allowing for people's tolerance of a recycled material.

As well as the useless bits you accidentally rip in this way, the average perfume swap package you set about plundering for its bubble wrap will typically come with some small rolled up bits of the stuff enclosing individual atomisers. These should be systematically sniffed before reuse, as they may be impregnated with the smell of the scent in question, and have to be discarded.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Rolls-Royce of bubble wrap formats is the READY-MADE POCKET. If my memory serves me, I recently sent Alnysie's prize draw samples in one of these, and after those colourful mood-enhancing gauze drawstring bags to which I made reference in a recent post, preformed bubble wrap pockets are about as sexy as it gets in the swapper's world.

Well, I say that...I have recently started to notice another new packaging material on the block - or on the roll, rather: it is a distant cousin of the polystyrene chip (and block), but is instead a thin, pliable sheet of polystyrene - opaque, and more or less as durable as bubble wrap at a guess, although it lacks any overt cushioning elements. And recently I received a swap package that was also housed in a preformed pocket of this material. Teecake was the recipient of this specimen when I sent her her giveaway samples, though not before I had photographed my hand modelling it as a glove. : - )

So....question time!

Do you have a favourite style/gauge of bubble wrap?

Have you ever found a use for the large gauge stuff, or does it lurk unnervingly behind the door of a cupboard, occupying a disproportionate amount of space?

When it comes to polystyrene, are you a fan of this new sheeting material, and do you also attract the chips as a magnet gathers iron filings?

Are there perhaps even more aspirational types of protective packaging material out there which I have yet to discover?





Photo of Concealed Weapons School sign from Wikimedia Commons, other photos my own