ORIGAMI BOX TUTORIAL (When Recycling Meets Crafting)

Origami- the Japanese art of folding paper into decorative shapes and figures. (Wikipedia)

I know how to make Origami Boxes a long time ago. I used them to house my handcrafted fabric headpieces, because I don’t want them to be crashed and squashed, especially when I have to ship them. I also used these boxes for my daughter’s invitations on her 4th birthday because her invites  were puzzle pieces.

This box is ideal to use when you have trinkets  or anything tiny to give as a gift which is  made up of maybe 60% recycled materials that you would essentially find in your house and 100%  out of love literally ( you will find out later why?)

Basically, there’s a lot of tutorial on origami boxes out there in the internet but, I will share to you how I make my origami boxes, because I could say that this is quite different. 🙂

Tools and things you need:

1. Old magazines
2. Box of cereals or milk
3. Scissors
4. Double sided tape
5. Printed paper towel or any paper that you wish to finish your box
6. Ribbon
7. Pen
8. Ruler

 

How to make:

Rip off a page from the magazine. Fig 1

Fold it in half in a way that the horizontal side at the top is folded over at the vertical on the left and make a crease. Mostly, magazines are rectangular in shape, but you need to achieve a square shape from your folded paper when it’s laid open and a triangle when it is folded in half. So, trim off the excess part of the magazine. Fig. 2

Lay it open, for convenience, we will just label the four angles as A, B, C and D. Angle D being pointed at your side, angle A & C on your left and right side respectively and angle B at the top. Next, take angle D and fold it half  at  the center, the crease that we made on on #2 will be your guide as the center. And do the same on angle B and then angle A and angle C, you can turn around the paper of course. You will have a smaller square this time.

Lay the magazine as it is from Fig. 3 and we will label the sides of the square as E, F, G, H to make it easy for us. Side E is on the left side, side F at the top , side G at the right and lastly, side H at the bottom. Fig 5. Next, take side H, and fold it half  at the center, the pointed angle of A and C will be your guide. And then do the same at side F. Next, open up the folded sides at this time and do the same on sides E and G. Fig. 6 and Fig. 7.

Open up the folded sides again just like in Fig. 5 and open angles A and C only and fold again sides F and H like in Fig. 8  leaving angles A and C open like in Fig. 9. Next, make  creases on four sides just half way in the middle shown in Fig. 9  in pink broken lines. The brown shaded areas are the sides that you are going to fold inside halfway in Fig. 10 and Fig. 11.

Open up the folded sides F and H and tuck in the 4  creased sides inside  in an upright position to create the two walls shown in Fig. 12 & 13. This is very easy since you already have the creases.

 

 Next push inside angle A and C  over the formed wall and tuck the flap inside to make as the floor shown in Fig. 14 and 15.

At this point, the first half of the box is basically finished, but since you are using a thinner paper, hence a magazine, you will put some cardboard backing to make it sturdy.

Open up  everything and lay it flat so you can paste your cardboard backing. Cut 4 rectangles and 1 bigger square from a pancake box a little smaller than the dimensions of the supposed box walls and floor shown in Fig. 16. You are going to paste the cardboard backing on the sides where you are folding inside ( we are just going to label it “IN SIDE”). Cut  small strips of double sided adhesive and post each one on the areas where you are going to put your card boards. Only a small strip is needed, enough  to hold your card boards in place.

Next is you will get your printed paper towel and lay flat and open with the wrong side facing up. And then put some double adhesive on the “OUT SIDE” of the magazine page , shown in Fig. 18.

Then you will paste or attach your magazine, the “OUT SIDE” with the wrong side of the printed paper towel by aligning the center side crease of the magazine with the center crease of the printed paper towel on all four sides. This way, you are sure that you attached your magazine page right at the center of our printed paper towel as shown in Fig. 19.

Then, trim off the excess printed paper towel and apply double sided adhesive once again  on each of the cardboard backing and fold everything back in to form the box.

VIDEO TUTORIAL

CLICK HERE to watch the video in Youtube.

Do the same on the other half of the box, but a little smaller to fit in with the first.

You need to cut a portion of the magazine  on the vertical side to make it a little bit shorter before you will fold it to make a perfect square as shown in Fig. 20. And the rest is just a repeat process like the first one.

Lastly, you can embellish your box with a ribbon, button, flower or any kind that you wish to finish your Origami Box.

 

 

Side note: This is my first ever tutorial , so please be considerate with my narration, both written and on the video. I am no expert, I am a newbie, trying to learn a lot of things but with a heart to listen for your CC. Thank you!