The Gypsy Spot - Gift Box

Hello hello! So, the challenge this week over at The Gypsy Spot is Gift Packaging!

Well, I had no idea what I was going to do around this time last sunday. But when I went to work on monday, a coworker set out some candy in these really neat boxes that she'd brought back from vacation. When the boxes were empty, I snatched them out of the trash. lol!  I took one apart so I could get an idea on construction, and created the box on my Gypsy!

I am making the cut file available for download HERE. This is Gypsy users only as I made it with Gypsy cartridges. However, if your Design Studio is the most current version, you could easilyopen the file and re-create it with the simple shapes I used (circles, rectangles, triangles mostly).  The box does include score marks even though I hate messing with them, but only because it's difficult to know where to score otherwise.

The decorations on the outside of this box are Winter Woodland (cardinal) and Joys of the Season (holly branch which I snipped and altered a little).

First of all, if you don't know yet, when you score a box you need to do the score indentation on the OUTSIDE of a fold, okay? This is important because this box has folds going in both directions.

Here is what the box looks like after cutting and this is the OUTSIDE of the box, and these red lines mark where you are doing the scoring indentation. Fairly easy.  Now flip it over...

 This is the INSIDE of the box, and you score (indentation) on these diagonal lines. If you cut this file you will notice that instead of tiny score marks, there is a long slit along these lines. The box I used as inspiration had this long slit and I believe it is because these folds need the extra bend that the slit gives them. At least I found the boxes fold easier because of those slits.

This is the (inside) box after I've folded along all the score lines in the correct direction.

 

There are two tabs on the side. I ran my favorite adhesive along those tabs and glued the box together.

This is the bottom, and I ran some adhesive on the tabs that are on the 6 sided shape here. However, notice the stop sign shape is not a precise fit. Sorry. I got sick of having to fix the weld every time I tried to get this to fit right. So I threw in the towel and said an "almost fit" is better than not being able to get it to weld correctly. lol  You don't notice the imprecise fit after the flaps are glued down. If you are more obsessive than me, you can fix the fit! lol

Glue all the flaps down with the longest one being the last. I realize the flaps look odd, but I based the shapes of them off the original box. The longest flap seems to stablize the box when it is standing.

Now the box is standing upright. If this had been cut from my printed cardstock, I would decorate it now.

Hopefully you pre-folded along all the scoring. The top should go together like this fairly easily, if you scored it correctly. The diagonal folds are "valleys" and the straight folds are "mountains".  This view of the closed top is how I left my finished box above, as I like it this way.

However, you can collapse the iris style top even further so that it is somewhat concave and rather pretty. This would be useful for mailing, or if you've made several and need to stack them in a bag or box.

Here is the original candy box and my re-creation. My box is smaller because I sized it for a 12x12 mat so I could use printed cardstock. If you want it bigger, you'd have to go to the trouble of grouping everything (including score marks) and resize it. If you do that, be sure to save it under a different name just in case, so the original file is still there.

I hope you enjoy this box and find it useful! Good timing for the Holiday season. You know some of the craft stores have poster board that is gold like the original candy box. I bet that would be pretty for a gift box! These would be great for homemade candies and cookies too!

Thanks for looking!