Angie and Sandras Box, framed card/book to fit inside

We're on the final leg now and I can recharge the poor batteries in my camera.

For each page you'll need a sheet of paper the same size as the paper you used for your box, a photo or piece of card 7.5cms sqr for 6*6 papers, 10cms sqr for 8*8 paper as well as 1 less piece if card 5cms sqr or 7cms square for the hinges. I made 6 pages so only needed 5 hinges. If each page is going to be heavily embellished or you use a thick paper 6 would be the maximum pages that would fit the smaller box. Thin paper with photos and rubdowns you would probably get about 10 pages and you can fit more pages if using 8*8 papers.


Start off by bringing the sides into the middle and folding, unfold, turn and repeat. If you have difficulty finding the centre line you can fold the paper in half first either across or diagonally but this will leave you with extra creases showing on the finished frame. I havent worried about it for the step by step but if I was making this as an extra special gift I would probably measure and score the lines with an embossing tool. Ignore all the extra creases on the pic, I'd forgot to photo it so had to go back in at the end, oops.

With the right side showing fold the corner into the middle, repeat for all 4 corners before opening out.

Turn the paper over and fold the corners to the diagonal crease line. Do not open back out.

This is the part of origami I call squidging ;o) Very carefully pinch the sides of one corner into each other while making sure that tiny folded over corner stays flat.

As the corner comes into itself you'll get a triangle popping up. Keeping a finger or thumb holding the base down use your other hand to push it flat.

Use the bone folder to make sure the edges are nice and crisp.

Once the 4 corners are done you'll have a shape like these. They will want to keep popping up but don't worry.

Very carefully slid the four corners of your photo/card into the four corner pockets. If you're using a very thick card it's a good idea to have shaved off 1mm of 2 sides of the card. I didn't bother even though I was using 300gsm ribbled card. You might find the page is now bowing, I like to turn them over and use the side of the bone folder to gently iron them flat.

Your page should now look like this and you can either decorate or skip straight to joining 2 pages together with a hinge.

Take the hinge square and fold in half diagonally, open out and fold back the other way along the same fold line. This is so the pages will fold in both directions.

Add a small strip of dst just along the side of the crease and carefull place in the side gap of one of your pages. Once the side of the page is next to the crease of the hinge squeeze so the dst sticks in the right place.

Add dst to the other side of the crease on the hinge and insert into the gap of the next page. Not sure if you can see the detail or not but the page on the right has creases across the corner. This is what happens if you found the middle of the paper by folding the paper diagonally. The page on the left has no crease because I found the middle by folding length wise.

I made 6 pages for my card and carefully inserted a piece of ribbon to the inside gaps at the back of the final page. It isnt essential but I wanted to secure the book and give something to help ease it from the box.

Finished but undecorated book/card inside the box.

Now if you don't want to make a box to hold you're book in you don't have to and you don't even have to use these pages in the same way as I have. By making 6 pages and 6 hinges you can turn the pages into sides of a cube simply by adding the hinges on all of the sides.

Huge thanks to Angie and Sandra for the day & demo. I know they'd love to see any of the boxes or books you make using this tutorial, so please leave a link. You're also more than welcome to shout if I've confused things with the step by step.

hugs