How to Make Boxes out of Calendars or Cards

We've been making lots of little boxes at our quilt retreats, and we wanted to share the fun with all of you! Here are directions for making your own little boxes out of old calendars, cards, or paper. The sturdiness of the paper you use will determine how sturdy your box is.

First off, here are the written instructions:

And here are the pictures illustrating those instructions:

Cut your card or calendar to be square, making sure that your chosen design remains centered. When you cut the piece for the bottom of the box, cut it smaller than the piece for the top. The easy way to do this: Cut the top and bottom pieces the same size. Then cut 1/4" off two adjoining sides of the bottom piece.

Take a ruler and mark a large X in the center of your paper/card/calendar.

Fold a corner into the center of the X and crease, then fold the creased edge in to meet the line of the X and crease. Do this for all four corners.

Unfold your paper and make four cuts, as you can see in the picture. The cuts should go the length of one triangle and one square, and there should be two squares between each cut. Make sure the cuts are facing each other! The instructions say to cut off the little triangle you get when you make the cut, but we just leave it on. Put a little glue in the center of your paper.

Next, take the large triangles on each side, and fold them up following the previous fold lines.

Now that you have two sides folded up, fold the last two up and over the tabs. Press and smooth in the middle to make sure that all four triangles that meet there are firmly held down by the glue.

You have a box! Here's the top of ours:

and here's the bottom:

Lots of little boxes. The largest ones are about 4" in size and were made from 12" pages, while the smallest one started at 4" and is now approximately 1 1/4". So your box will wind up being about 1/3 the size of the paper you start with.