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Enjoy Your Own DIY Stamps

Foam is often seen as a material that only exists to get a job done. This is true for applications like couch cushions, backer rod, and home insulation. There’s a lighter side to foam though, one that doesn’t require that it be used for work or business. By virtue of its diverse textures and shapability, foam is an excellent material to use in arts and crafts; particularly as hand crafted stamps and in painting. DIY customized foam stamping materials can make for a fun hobby, family activity, or practical painting product for decorating your home.

It’s easy to make clean and smooth foam cuts using closed-cell products like neoprene or minicell by carving with a sharp, non-serrated blade. Their structural consistency makes for incredibly detailed stamps for one-of-a-kind designs in home projects or arts and crafts. A foam exercise mat is made out of the same material in many cases, as an example of the material’s structure. Stamps are also a great way to get your children involved by allowing them to create their own patterns for a teen bedroom design. Stamps can also help decorate a new nursery without having to paint an entire room or buy and mount wallpaper.

Open-cell foam is great for fun, casual patterns. Their cellular structure produces sponge-like textures for stamping. Many pre-cut shapes exist in open-cell foam, so finding a design you’re looking for is very simple. Open-cell foam is also great for painting corners and jambs and other hard to reach places where brushes aren’t getting the job done. Foam can be trimmed to shape and will get into the smallest spaces.

If it’s a delicate DIY home decoration project or just having fun with the family, foam stamping is a simple and effective way to enjoy the artistic side of this versatile material.

Store and Protect China, Flatware and Other Delicates

Fragile china and silverware heirlooms are given the utmost care when they’re in use or on display. Because of their sentimental value, to say nothing of their monetary value, it’s important to take the same degree of care and caution when they’re being stored or packed away.

If your china and flatware is used fairly regularly, protective packing sheets can be an excellent investment to prevent scratches and chips when they are stacked and stored. Thin pieces of foam or durable sections of fabric large enough to cover the contact area can keep can keep them ready to use but easily protected. If you have limited storage space and your nicer, less-frequently used wares share cupboard space with everyday-use items, more substantial padding materials can be used to guard against the frequent in-and-out of the other items. Materials such as economical packaging foam with an eggcrate cushion pattern or plastic bubble wrap can offer extra protection over rags or paper towel wrappings.

For long-term storage or moving, taking another step and using more durable foams, like the high-density type used to cushion furniture, can absorb impacts and help keep everything safe and in one piece. Microfiber cloths are also a useful product for wrapping utensils, as they won’t leave dust or lint behind that needs to be cleaned off when you decide to use them.

It is very affordable to take any of these protection steps mentioned, and considering the value of what you’re protecting, to both you and your wallet, packaging materials are well worth the investment.

Should You Choose a Memory Foam Mattress?

Memory foam mattresses have been a hot-button topic since they were introduced, with their “space-age technology” and memorable television commercials. Sure, this product has received plenty of hype, but does it live up to it? In short, the answer is yes; memory foam is the rare product that actually meets its lofty expectations.

When in contact with the body of the user, this temperature-sensitive material forms to the person on it, softening around curves and contours. This provides incredible pressure reduction that boosts circulation and gives you a custom sleeping surface each and every night, whether it’s in a canopy bed or on a friend’s floor for the weekend with a folding mattress. Some beds can result in pressure points that lead to tossing and discomfort, limbs falling asleep and even numbness. With a memory foam mattress supporting concave areas like your lower back while yielding to convex body parts like the shoulders and hips, this becomes a non-issue and you get an invigorating sleep.

People have described memory foam beds as like sleeping on a cloud as the visco-elastic polyurethane warms to the body and gently cushions aches and discomfort with cozy support. Memory foam is a versatile material as well, available in multiple densities and used in numerous products, from mattresses and toppers to a body bolster or bed pillow.

If you experience difficulty falling asleep, are looking to purchase a new mattress or want to see if you can get even better sleep than you already do, give memory foam a shot.

Comfort Tips for Back-Sleepers

Getting comfortable at night as you lie in bed is a unique experience for everybody. People fall asleep in all kinds of positions and what is most comfortable for one person may not be for another. These different positions do different things to our bodies as well, impacting alignment, circulation and pressure. Back sleepers make up a major chunk of the sleeping populace, and there are a few things these people can do to have the most comfortable sleeping experience possible.

For back sleepers, it all starts with the pillow. A pillow that has too much height, also known as loft, puts the head and neck at a downward angle, propping it up too much for all-night comfort. A pillow with too much loft can leave a back-sleeper with neck soreness in the morning or even all day. Pillows custom made for back sleepers are typically softer and feature a lower profile than a side-sleeper would want. This allows the head to rest in a straighter position in line with the spine and cradles the neck and shoulders.

The most common complaint people have about their mattresses and pillows is waking up with back pain. For back-sleepers, alleviating this may be done in a couple ways. A back pain pillow is a useful bolster that can lend support to the small of the back during the night. These can be as large or as small as desired and most are made in an oval shape to keep them from rolling away during the night.

Another comfort addition people don’t always consider is a leg pillow. These can help with circulation and take pressure off the lower back. They can be large pillows, body pillows or even specially designed wedges, but any sort of boost is often of benefit to back sleepers.

If sleeping on your back is your preferred nighttime position, consider these options as a way of getting even better rest.

The Importance of Fire Retardant Foam

With the wide range of uses for foam materials, it makes sense that some applications need to hold their products to different standards than others. For applications that expose materials to potential ignition sources or even open flame, fire retardant polyurethane foam is the right material to get the job done safely.

While often used in situations where it is a part of construction or encased in a cover, some foam uses require the material to be exposed and out in the open to perform their job. One of these uses is acoustical treatment, where foam can be used in an assortment of ways. Acoustic material foam can absorb vibrations, reduce echoes and standing waves and clarify and clear sound in products from wall tiles to corner bass absorbers. These products are mounted in environments like recording studios where there are many potential sources for ignition like smoking, candles or the amount of wiring and electronics in the space. Proper acoustic foam materials are fire retardant so in the case of an accident, the foam treatment will smolder and provide an opportunity for extinguishment, rather than burst into fast-spreading flames. This can easily be the difference between a close call and tragedy.

Another example of the importance of fire retardant materials in the right application is a motocross pit. Used to provide extreme sports athletes a safe landing area to experiment and practice tricks, these are filled with foam blocks. Landing a motorcycle or ATV in materials not treated to resist fire is incredibly dangerous. This is why riders exclusively use fire retardant foam materials for landing cushions in their foam practice pits.

Specialty products exist for specialty purposes, and fire retardant foam is just one example of a product that has identified the unique requirements of a job and rises to meet expectations.

Using Foam to Help Pack When Moving

Moving is one of life’s greatest stressors. Between finding a new place, staying on schedule and picking up and leaving a place you’re familiar with, it’s easy to see why. During the moving process many things come up that only add fuel to the fire, and one is packing your possessions.

In our homes and apartments, everything has a place where it belongs. When we move, we have to take everything we own and throw it in a truck or container with everything else. This can be a problem, when things are tossed into boxes and shaken and rattled, with only a few rags or towels as buffers. To make moving easier, investing in custom foam padding protection can keep your valuables safe and your mind at ease.

The familiar eggcrate pattern in foam sheets is one of the best materials for moving, with its economical manufacturing method. It is easily cut to size and absorbs impact well. For guarding larger or heavier furniture like dressers or tables, foam rubber sheets are durable enough to absorb impact and prevent scratching without tearing. After getting to your new home, they can be placed under the feet of tables or couches to serve as a protective furniture cushion if you’re worried about damaging hardwood or tiled floors while moving things around and getting situated in your new place.

If you plan on moving soon, get some practical packing materials ahead of time and give yourself one less thing to worry about.

Benefits of Natural Latex Beds

Traditional mattresses are made of materials that can trigger allergies in many people, sometimes even when brand-new. If dust mites make their way into a mattress, people can be stuck with a mattress that leaves them stuffy, congested and poorly rested. If you are an allergy sufferer or just searching for a more natural alternative to traditional bedding, latex mattresses may be just what you’re looking for.

A natural Dunlop or Talalay latex mattress is hypoallergenic and doesn’t contain any synthetic ingredients or chemicals. The two varieties are slightly different based upon their formation, but share the same general characteristics. By virtue of their open-cell foam structure and pin-core design, a result of the manufacturing process, latex mattresses are aerating and one of the coolest sleeping surfaces on the market, great for people who “sleep hot.” Latex bedding conforms to the body in a supportive but pressure-relieving style that responds to you through every movement. This means support is constant and immediate, no matter your position. There are many mattress foam density levels of latex as well, so people can enjoy the benefits of latex whether they like a soft or firm mattress. It can even be formed into a latex pillow to have an all-latex setup or mattress toppers for people looking for comfort exclusively.

If you’re looking for better sleep, better health or better comfort, you can find all three in a natural latex mattress.

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