Mounting questions

[Furret]

After 3 months of swimming in a jar of ethanol, my p. imperator was finally gutted, disinfected, stuffed, and dried. I also took the exuvium from my g. rosea and let it sit in some ethanol so I could re-pose it.
All went perfectly, and both are going to be Christmas presents for my friend in New York.
I have two questions though;
What can I use to mount it on? I'm thinking of a half-inch thick block of wood from the craft store, since I'll be using superglue to make it stick. Any other suggestions?

And the most important question...

How do I package it so that it won't wreck up in the box when I mail it out?
I mean, both are obviously extremely delicate, and one bad shake or something and it's gonna be in pieces.
Do I put it in a plastic container with cotton inside? Or tape the platform on which it's mounted on and tape it to the bottom of the container?

Here are photos of the completed critters

 

[MB623]

I'm not sure about mounting. Take a tupperware container slighty bigger than your specimen and fill it 1/4 of the way with layers of cotton balls. Then place your specimen on the layer of cotton balls in the center of the container. Now fill the container the rest of the way with cotton balls covering your specimen. Fill the container so that it is just barely heaping above the top rim. Now when you place the lid on the tupperware it should compress the cotton just enough to snuggly hold your specimen in place. This would probably work better if the subject wasn't mounted, but since it is a gift and your probably wanting to mount it before shipping I would suggest taping the mounted item to the bottom of the tupperware then backfilling with cotton so the weight of the mount doesn't crush your gift, the mount can crush your gift even against the cotton. The package will be flipped, dropped , and thrown, or I'm assuming anyway, so better safe than sorry.After packed the tupperware container will need to be packaged up like a normal package with lots of bubble wrap or newspaper to hold that tupperware in place inside the box. I've only mounted things to foam with pins, so sorry I couldn't help with mounting, but I hope this helps some with your shipping question.

 

[MB623]

I was thinking, you may want to use something like Elmer's glue to set the pose of the scorp and t, then use super glue to reinforce the Elmer's glue. Super glue dries really fast and you may make a mistake and want to repose it which Elmer's glue allows you to do. Of course I'm talking about small dabs of glue so it's not visible, but enough to hold it in place until you secure it with super glue. Just a thought.