Open Monday: Re-purpose a Christmas Card

WHAT!? A box made from a Christmas card?

That's just madness!

 Do you have piles of Christmas cards from last year that you don't know what to do with? Or maybe you have some left over cards from one of those cute boxed sets from Target? Re-purpose it!

Every Christmas, if I'm in need of a small box for wrapping a gift, I hunt down an old Christmas card and turn it into a box!  (My 7th grade science teacher taught me this trick, and I'm still using it)

Here's what you need:

A cute card

Pencil

Ruler

Tape (I could only find packaging tape, but scotch works too)

Scissors

My cute card and supplies

 

Step 1: (Ignore the fact that this is vertical, Blogger's fault) Take your card and cut it straight down the fold line. This will give you your lid (The front of the card) and the bottom part of the box (the back of the card)

 

Step 2: Take your ruler and lay it diagonal from corner to corner and draw a line. Repeat to create an X in the middle. Be sure to do this for both parts of the card. 

Step 3: For the bottom part of your box, take one edge and bring it in to the dead center of the X. Repeat for all sides. I use a ruler to really press the edges, makes them nice and crisp.

 Step 4: This step is very similar to step 3. To create your lid, your going to fold in your edges again BUT DO NOT BRING THEM TO DEAD CENTER OF X! Got it? Okay. Instead, bring the edges in just a little shy of the center, this will make this half of the box slightly larger so that it will fit over the bottom half. Repeat on all sides. You should have two halves of a card that look like this:

 

Step 5: Now you need to make flaps so you can fold your box into place. To do that, cut along the fold of the short squares until you come to the intersection of the other fold lines. Since this is a little trickier to explain, you can refer to the photo below. Repeat this step for the other half.

 

Step 6: Bring your flaps inward and tape them together to create the sides. You will have a loose, random flap that you will bring upward to the two flaps you just taped. Like this one up here. You will then fold that excess over your two taped flaps. This is what it should look like:

 

You can also tape this down to make it look neater, although it is not necessary. Repeat step 6 for the other half of your box. Once all your sides are up, folded and taped, put your lid on and voila! Your cute little box that needs no wrapping!

 

Now, I have the perfect little box for niece's Christmas present!

I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial and I'm sure you'll be finding excuses to make more of these little guys, they are a lot of fun.