Usually when I ship a package internationally, the post office has a small plastic envelope that I can use to put three copies of the shipping label/customs declaration form into on the outside of the package. I guess they didn't have any of these envelopes today, so the clerk told me to tape all three copies directly onto the package. Is this allowed? Or should I buy some plastic envelopes to put the forms in? I was reading online that it should be in a plastic sleeve. I just want to avoid any trouble if I get a different clerk when I go back to drop it off. Thank you!

I'm sending a Christmas gift to a friend in Australia, but I don't know how the customs forms work. It asks for the weight and price of every item, and says it will be validated against the total weight. A lot of things are free, is $0 acceptable? And some things are like stickers, and literal pieces of paper... like a flyer, and a single coloring sheet/info page on a local park... how do I get a weight for these?

Plus, I have a lot of little chunks of fossil pieces (confirmed with US customs, and Australia customs, and the US Office of Law Enforcement that these are allowed to be shipped to Australia) but the customs forms say "weight" and "how many". They are so small, I don't know that a weight will even pick up... would "a bag of tiny common fossils" and the combined weight of the bag be appropriate, or how would I list that?

Thank you so much for any help you can offer!

Edit: in case anyone sees this and is also wondering! The forms specific not to lump things together and to be as specific as possible... there are not many lines at all, and I had to lump everything together in vague categories lol. Like any form of papers, brochures, stickers, photos, etc I put under "stationary". The package sent perfectly fine with no issues!