Eden Project

How to make an origami gift box

Follow these simple instructions on how to make an origami box, and with a bit of clever paper folding you’ve got yourself a fantastic Christmas gift box.

These cute little things look great when made with brightly coloured or patterned card, old Christmas cards or even used gift bags.

You can experiment with different sized paper to create small or large boxes, to fit your present.

Start with two square pieces of card, and trim one so that its sides are 1cm shorter than the other (figure 1).

The larger piece of card will form the lid of your box, fitting snugly snugly over the base, which will be made out of your smaller piece of card.

To make the lid, take the larger piece of card and find its centre point. You can do this by drawing straight lines from corner to corner using a pencil and ruler.

Place your card in front of you at an angle, so it looks like a diamond. Fold the bottom tip in to the centre point (figure 2).

You then want to fold the bottom quarter in half again so that the flat edge runs along the horizontal centre line (figure 3). Unfold and repeat this again for every side.

With all sides unfolded, you’ll see you card is now criss-crossed with folds – with a clear square emerging around the centre point.  Mark the four corners of this square with dots so that you can see them clearly (figure 4). The area between these dots is how big your final lid will be.

With the card placed in a diamond shape in front of you again, try to make out the vertical, parallel lines that run through your dots. Using scissors, make cuts along these lines from the outside edges inwards. Make sure that you stop at the dots you marked and don’t cut into the centre square (figure 5).

You should make four cuts – and you can see if you’ve done it right by tucking in the top and bottom corners and making it look like a double-ended arrow (figure 6).

Placing your card flat in front of you as a diamond again, fold the right and left points back into the centre point, then fold them in half again (as you did in figure 3). Lift up this last fold and you can see the first two sides of your lid emerge.

You should now have two flaps left on either side of your lid (figure 7). Bring these up and over the two sides you’ve just made (figure 8). All four of your tips should fit snugly together at the centre point, now the middle of your lid.

Repeat these steps on your second piece of card to create the base of your box (figure 9). The larger lid should fit perfectly over the smaller base, giving you a lovely little giftbox (figure 10).

If you’re visiting Eden between now and 18 December 2011, pop into our Hive of Activity, where we’re running free craft sessions. Throughout the month on our online Advent calendar, we’ll be bringing you more ideas and tips on preparing for Christmas, plus the chance to win prizes.

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Category:

• A Time of Gifts Calendar

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A Time of Gifts, Christmas, gifts, Inspiration