Kirigami box tutorial

I just love making kirigami boxes. This ancient art makes for beautiful and sturdy paper craft boxes with no visible fold seams. Here I am using the Pion Design "Studio of Memories" collection.

You will need 2 square papers one for the top and one for the bottom of the box, scissors, adhesive and anything you wish to decorate the box with. 12x12 papers will make a 4-inch square box and a 6x6 papers will make a 2-inch box.

STEP 1: Cut one of the papers just slightly smaller (1/4 inch or so) - that will be your bottom piece of the box. Now, find the centre of both your papers by aligning a ruler to the corners and marking in the middle of the side of the paper that will be on the inside of the box.

 STEP 2: Fold in corners to the middle.

STEP 3: Open up 2 opposite corner and then fold in the remaining 2 sides over again to the middle.

STEP 4: Open it all up and repeat on the other 2 sides. You will then get a square creased (top of the box) in the middle of the paper and a smaller square pattern on the rest of the paper.

STEP 5: On two opposing sides, cut up to the middle box shape (along the crease).

STEP 6: Fold in the uncut sides down like this:

STEP 7: Fold up on the crease to make the side of your box and fold in the cut flaps to look like below. You can use a piece of tape to keep the flaps together.

STEP 8: Fold the remaining pieces over the taped together flaps.

STEP 9: Secure with adhesive.

STEP 10: Repeat the entire process with the other sheet of paper.

STEP 11: Decorate and assemble the two parts (smaller piece of paper is the bottom portion of the box). I made a water distressed flower with my sugarplum flower tutorial technique, using 8 layers of different shape and size flower punches.

I hope you give this folded box a try. This is a great, quick little project that took me under half an hour to complete with the decorating!