Gift Box Tutorial - Part 1

Hello again everyone... sorry for the delay.. I thought I'd have had time to post this tutorial last week, but I got distracted with some new crafty goodies... anyway... thought I'd try something a little different this time and make a Gift Box:

I know Christmas is over... but hopefully you haven't ditched all your Christmas cards yet... if you're like me, you'll hoard them, ready to recycle next year.  But hold on... see if you've got any perfectly square ones still lying around....

This is a beautifully simple idea and obviously doesn't have to be done with Christmas cards or papers, but this is what I'd used, so humour me ;) LOL  in fact, with Valentine's day looming, this could be a lovely gift for your sweetheart - oh dear, how soppy was that!!!  moving on quickly! LOL

Materials needed are very basic:

A square card (the larger the better), you'll need both front and back....  if you don't have a greetings card... you can use any patterned card and cut out a square from that.

Pencil, ruler & scissors.  see? very basic :)  you won't even need glue for this bit!

Taking your card, cut it in half... carefully :)

Using your ruler, measure the size of the square (the one with the design) - This is the box lid.  For the bottom of the box, (the other half of the greetings card) make it 1/2 a centimeter smaller - for example - my card is 16 cm square, so my other one will be 15.5 cm square. If you're doing this in inches, work it out roughly as a 1/4 of an inch less.

Next.. turn your square over (so you're working on the back) rule a line diagonally from top corner to opposite bottom corner both left and right. so you now have an X.

Fold one corner up to the middle of the X.  Using your ruler, run it over the fold line to crease it.  Fold it over again up to the ruled line and crease it.  Unfold that and repeat this step for the other corners.

Open out your card and you will see the small square in the centre - if it helps, you can draw a line around it...

now, take your scissors and careful not to go beyond the line of your middle square, cut from the edge of your first fold line (the bottom of the little triangle) towards your square in the centre... (photos really do help don't they? lol) do this on both sides of that triangle.  Turn your paper round and do the same on the opposite side.

Here's the fidgety bit....

With your card on the diagonal and cut sections vertical, fold in the sides opposite each other to form large triangles, then fold up the sides again, to make the sides of your box and wrap the corners round to make the other sides...

Then fold up the two sections that were cut, they should wrap neatly over the top of the other edges.

So... once you have both boxes folded... the top - the one with your nicely centred design (mine wasn't centred, but that wasn't my fault!!) should fit down over the bottom one.  If you find it's a little tight, just trim a small sliver off two adjacent sides of the bottom one.

You can line the inside of your box with contrasting tissue paper - this would make a lovely gift box for a pair of earrings, or a necklace or even some jelly babies!!! :)

Check back in the next day or so for Part 2, where I'll show you how to make a 3D rose to decorate your box lid :)

thanks for stopping by, and as always, if you make the box, I'd love to see it in the comments below :) :)