Ship your gifts in style with these local artist–designed boxes

Dec 10 2020, 8:16 pm

The pressure of ensuring packages arrive in time for holiday celebrations and virtual gift exchanges is ever looming, especially when we consider the influx of deliveries that will be taking place in the coming weeks.

This season, Purolator alone anticipates it will pick up and deliver roughly 46 million packages — an increase of nearly 20% from last year.

While we can do our part to shop and ship earlier to ensure gifts make it under the tree, the company has also gone to lengths to increase its pick-up and drop-off locations to make it easier to stay connected with loved ones.

During the holidays the outside of packages can be important, but this year you can skip wrapping paper altogether. The courier of the North is working with 13 emerging local artists from coast to coast to design their own limited-edition seasonal boxes.

The artists have created personal renderings of winter in each of their regions. Collectively, the interpretations make for a rich tapestry of our country’s landscape in its most characteristic season.

Available now, Canadians will find these uniquely designed boxes at their local Purolator Shipping Centre and Michaels stores to use for sending packages with Purolator Express service.

“We are so excited to work with these amazing Canadian artists from different backgrounds and regions. Since so many of us cannot travel, our hope is that you find a design that inspires you to share something special with a loved one, no matter where they are,” says Laurie Weston, Director, Retail at Purolator.

She continues, “Our goal is to make it safer, simpler, and even more convenient for you to send and receive packages. And with this initiative, we also want to encourage you to celebrate moments of joy and creativity together. So create something thoughtful — or buy it from a local retailer — personalize a card, and then ship it to a loved one in one of these beautiful boxes. And don’t worry, we deliver to every postal code in the country.”

Mary Haasdyk, a Calgary-based illustrator who works in editorial, publishing, and public art, brought a fresh and emotive perspective to her interpretation of Albertan winters. Taking inspiration from candles as a source of light and hope, she reimagined the mountains and prairies and how they take shape throughout the darker months.

Mary Haasdyk, artist box/Purolator

“Candles have always been a significant part of winter and Christmas for me. Growing up, we would light them for advent leading up to Christmas (a church tradition of waiting in the dark and anticipating Jesus’ birth). We’d light another one each week with the light growing brighter as we approached Christmas [as] a symbol of hope in the darkness.

“This design depicts the edge of the mountains [and] prairies over which the warm Chinook winds arrive in Alberta, and celebrates the quiet beauty of winter. The candles stand as beacons of hope in the dark, and as symbols of staying connected in this strange season of being distant from people we love,” says Haasdyk.

Other featured artists include Nhesa Patoy, an illustrator working in the Yukon, Karine Deschênes, an artist from the Charlevoix region of Quebec, and Patrick Hunter, an Ojibwe painter from Red Lake, Ontario. 

Thanks to a partnership with Michaels, Canadians are being encouraged to get creative and share their own interpretation of the holidays. People from coast to coast are invited to visit michaels.ca/en/boxdesignsweeps to learn more about the 13 artists, download a box template, and enter their own design to win some great prizes.

Daily Hive

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