Christmas in August - Gift Box Tutorial

Yesterday I thought about the packaging of my earrings. I mean, August is almost over and you can't be too early thinking about christmas and a nice way of wrapping your goodies.
I wanted something that looks good, protects the jewellery from damage and doesn't cost too much. Finally I stumbled upon a little origami box. I guess, many of you have seen this box somewhere over the web.
The good thing about is, that you can vary the size according of what you want to put inside. But I didn't like the fact, that it doesn't really look like a jewellery box. The walls are too high which also means that I'd have to use a bigger envelop for shipping. So I wrecked my brain to find a way to make this box but with nicer walls. And after some experiments it worked!


As I really like the result I thought I'd share my wisdom with you an and let you know how I made them. So here's what you have to do:

What you need:
Scissors
A Bone folder
A Ruler
2 square pieces of paper (One needs to be slightly smaller than the other)

What to do:
1. Remove the dog from your desk.

2. Take a piece of paper and cut a square. Use your guillotine if your have one (Mine was a christmas present my boyfriend gave me - The man knows what a girl wants!).
3. Fold from point to point in half. Then fold in half again from point to point. If you chose rather thicker paper or cardboard (as I did) use a bone folder or ruler for this.

4. Now take all four corners and fold to center.
5. Leave the corners closed and fold all sides to the center.
6. Open it. It should now look like this:
7. Turn the paper around. The four squares in in the center will be the lid of your box. I marked mine with a pen. Now cut towards the marked square as shown.
8. Take a pen and draw lines as shown on the sides that are parallel to the cuts you made.
9. Cut along the lines. The result should look like this:
10. Take the pen again and draw two lines on each of the remaining sides as shown. Cut along the lines.
11. Fold one side in half so it touches the square you marked before. Unfold again and to the same thing with the other three sides.

12. You made all the necessary folds and cuts! Now you have to put the box together. Therefor take one of the long sides and fold them as shown in the picture. Then do the same thing with the other long side. You should have two points touching inside and the short tabs sticking out.
13. Now fold the two tabs in to create the remaining sides. All points should be at the bottom of the box touching with no overlap. If the do overlap take a piece of masking tape and stick it in the center of the box. And that‘s it! You just finished the lid of your box.
14. To make the bottom of the box repeat steps 1-13. But remember that the paper needs to be slightly smaller (3-4mm) than the first one. È voilà - a pretty origami box with small walls! Perfect for all kinds of little gifts or the earrings by Smile Molecules. :-D

Gift Tags

After Kathrin already posted some things here, it‘s time for me to tell you what I‘ve been up to over the last couple of weeks.

Instead of dealing with my stuff for university I mostly did one thing: gift tags - big tags, small tags, many tags. If I‘d use all of them for myself I guess I‘d probably be having enough tags for the next three or four years.
However, I'm planning to add them to our Etsy-Store some time soon.



My first attempts in making tags kind of failed. The edges were frayed or the punching tie simply refused to work at all. Also I experimented with my hand-carved stamps. Some of those tags came out quite nicely, but I had trouble assesing how intense the colors would come out on the different kinds paper I used.



So for now I returned to making really simple tags without any frills and leave the embellishments to our customers.
For the tags I recycled invitation card from parents‘ printshop which otherwise would have been thrown away.



Oh and by the way: Sorry about the photos - They‘re not great. Guess we‘ll have to do them again.

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Nachdem Kathrin in den letzten Wochen schon fleißig war, wirds Zeit, dass ich hier auch mal was von mir hören, bzw. Sehen lasse.

Statt mich in den letzten Wochen mit meinem Studium zu befassen hab viel lieber eines gemacht: Gift Tags - Kleine Gift Tags, große Gift Tags, viele Gift Tags.
Wenn ich alle für mich selbst verwenden würde, hätte ich nach vorsichtigen Schätzungen genügend Geschenkanhänger für die nächsten 3 bis 4 Jahre.
Ich plane allerdings einige demnächst in unseren Etsy-Store zu setzen.

Die ersten Versuche in Sachen Geschenkanhängern waren sowohl in Ausführung als auch Gestaltung noch etwas „unbeholfen“. Ecken waren ausgefranst, oder die Stanzform versagte zwischenzeitlich den Dienst. Ich habe außerdem mit meinen selbstgestalteten Stempeln experimentiert, einige Anhänger sind auch ganz nett geworden, aber ich hatte Probleme einzuschätzen wie intensiv die Farben auf den verschiedenen Papieren färben würde.
Also bin ich erst einmal wieder dazu übergegangen ganz simple Ausführungen herzustellen. Und das gestalten den geneigten Käufern zu überlassen.

Ich habe für die Anhänger übrigens Hochzeits- und Einladungskarten aus der Druckerei meiner Eltern recycelt. Sie eignen sich dafür wirklich hervorragend.

Oh und sorry wegen der Bilder: Sie sind leider nicht so nett geworden wie erwartet, werden wir wohl doch noch mal machen müssen.