Hexagonal gift boxes

If you live in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Peru, Switzerland, Canada, Belgium or Brazil (along with a host of other countries) it’s coming up to Mothers Day. Stumped as to a gift idea? Why not make or bake your mum something sweet and nestle it in a cute hexagon gift box?

I’ve had a bit of fun messing around with watercolour splodges and have come up with a couple of templates for you to download and make up. Or you can download the blank template and decorate as you wish!

For this project you’ll need:
Adhesive or double-sided tape
The thickest A4 card stock you can put through your printer (mine takes 200gsm, but check your printer for details)
Scissors, scalpel or exacto knife
Some decorative ribbon (I’ve marked cutouts to allow for 10mm wide ribbon)
Some paints, crayons, pencils or other decorative materials (if working with the blank template)

The templates make up 2 sized boxes 72mm wide in diameter (point to point) x 60mm high
and 90mm wide in diameter (point to point) x 43mm high

You could easily scale them up and print on A3 card if you required them to be larger.

For the ones above I did some quick watercolour scribbles and added handwritten notes in white pencil (white charcoal pencil to be exact). But the sky is the limit. You could bedazzle, embroider, paint, draw… whatever you’d like! This would be rather a lovely project to work on with a small child as you could cut it out and they could decorate the box as they wish and with a little help from you, assemble it.

Print and cut out your desired template. I cut my templates out using my Graphtec cutter/ plotter but it’s not a difficult template to cut out by hand.

If you’ve printed out the plain template, now is the time to get scribbling and decorating to your hearts content!

Fold along each of the dotted lines and glue the edge tab to the underside of the opposing panel to create the hexagonal shape.

If you need a ‘base’ in your gift box for heavier gifts, glue one set of the top tabs and gift box lids together for extra support as shown (I used strong double-sided tape).

To attach the ribbon, glue the ribbon to the underside of the tab shown and thread through the ribbon slot as shown.

Then thread through the corresponding ribbon slot in the lid, pulling though and aligning the lid and tabs. Repeat on both sides and tie into a pretty bow.

And there you have it. Pretty hexagonal gift boxes ready for your gift!

Download the 72 x 60 patterned gift box here (67mb)

Download the 72 x 60 plain gift box here (67mb)

Download the 90 x 43 patterned gift box here (112mb)

Download the 90 x 43 plain gift box here (112mb)

Apologies for the large size files and so slow load times. I am still trying to find a way to reduce them further.

Please do not link to my templates directly, if you want to share my work, please link back to this blog post.
Thank you.

Hexagonal gift boxes by Next to Nicx by Nicola Pravato is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

1 Comment
next to nicx
May 6, 2013
Craft, Design, DIY, Holidays, Packaging, Paper art, Tutorial
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Origami Easter Bunny Basket

It’s been a tough couple of months. Pregnancy for me has been a bit of a trial. It’s meant that I’ve been unable to do much more than vegetate on the couch. There is now a Nicola shaped impression permanently pressed into the couch cushions. But I’ve just ticked over to 14 weeks and the nausea and chronic illness have started to abate. I’m now able to eat small meals and my energy levels have slowly increased. The munchkin is in good health and according to the ultrasounds he/she is having a fabulous time doing somersaults and jazz hands, not affected by my lethargy at all! All of which have made me happy.

But something that truly made my day on Tuesday was opening my post box parcel shelf to discover this gorgeous little Easter gift! My friend Sandra had made my husband and I an origami easter bunny basket and filled it with delicious little chocolate Easter eggs! It was such a sweet little gift to leave and positively made my day!

I did a bit of googling and found a fabulous video tutorial that shows you how to make them, so you can have a go at making them too. It’s the wonderful work of Leyla Torres. Enjoy!

Paper Tea Cup #1 Lid (insert option)

As promised, here is the very belated, revised lid I designed for my Paper Tea Cups #1!

It won’t fit on yesterdays tea cup, I’m still working on a lid design for it, it’s a little trickier.

I love this design as it allows for the addition of a ribbon and bow, whilst maintaining the clean lines on the exterior of the cup.

As promised, here is the alternate tea cup design! It’s a bit taller and wider than the one I uploaded last week. But I’m really happy with the design! It goes together exactly the same as Paper Tea Cup #1 . It’s cut out of 160gsm card stock and glued together with a quick drying adhesive or double sided tape. Read more

Paper Tea Cups #1

I’ve been messing around with paper. I’m not sure exactly why I decided to make paper tea cups, but inspiration hit over the holidays and I couldn’t find one online. Hence the gauntlet was thrown down! I had to make one. It took me a lot longer than I anticipated. But I’m ecstatic with the results! This is by far and away my favourite template/ tutorial so far. AND I’ve got another version of it almost ready to upload next week.

These would be perfect as use for cupcakes, biscuits, little presents, used as gift boxes or just as gorgeous packaging. Paint them, embroider them, bedazzle them… The options are endless! I created a lid template so it becomes a very usable gift box but I had a lightening bolt moment last night and I’m now sure I’ve worked out how to make a lid that sits inside the cup so that the pretty outer lines of the tea cup aren’t ruined. I’ll include it with the other version of the tea cup that I’ll upload next week.

I’ve been collecting pretty glass baubles for our Christmas tree for a number of years. But the closure of one of my favourite local stores and the lack of pretty baubles this year has meant I’ve not added as many to my collection as normal. Everything this year appears to have been attacked with a glitter gun! So I decided to make a couple of baubles. Read more

Foldify…

Ok, so it’s not often that I see an iPad app that has me bouncing in my seat with excitement. But this one did!

Foldify is an awesome app currently going through the Apple approval process that allows you to create your own paper toys on your iPad, print them out and make them *cue riotous happy dances here*.

This is going to keep me very entertained over Christmas! My robot army may have quite a few new members soon!

Christmas Packaging- Milk Cartons

I’ve been busy creating items for Christmas this week. I’ve been struggling to pin down what I wanted to do for our Christmas cards. I love what I’ve made but there’s just a few things that I’m not 100% happy with. So I put the card project aside to come back to and started creating packaging for the Dulce de Leche I made the other day.

I thought that as I’m basically giving away cooked milk I’d put them into little milk cartons.

This is the result! What do you think?

I think they’d also make lovely boxes for small gifts or for biscuits or little Christmas cakes.

Constructive chaos

One of the difficulties in living overseas, and having so many of our friends scattered to the four winds is keeping in touch. Whilst Facespace and Twitter are fabulous, they’re poor substitutes for ‘real’ communication and I often find myself taking the easy/ lazy route of leaving a quick message on a friends wall rather than writing a proper email or sending snail mail. I’ve been trying to rectify this of late.

I’ve a gorgeous friend who lives in San Francisco with whom I swap notes, cards and presents at random times during the year, but with a particular focus on birthdays. One year this wonderful lady even crafted me my first every birthday cake in the shape of a blue whale! So as it’s her birthday tomorrow I’ve been creating this card. It’s horrendously late this year but as she’s currently holidaying in Australia, I’ve taken a little longer to put her gift together. I’m hoping it’ll be at her abode waiting for her when she returns!

Lego Party Goodie Boxes

My friend Clare has a 7 year old son who is Lego mad! He’s gone as far as memorising the catalog numbers of the kits he wants and can tell you just how many pieces there are in each box!

So it was pretty much a given that his next birthday would require a Lego theme. And whilst Clare has the challenge of creating a Lego cake and all manner of other Lego themed party items, I offered to make her some goodie boxes for each of the children to take home filled with gifts and lollies.

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