Toolbox
- patterned cardstock
- scissors
- double-sided tape
- bone folder
- ruler or straight edge
One of my friends who got married this year told me last week that she had the hardest time finding favor boxes to use at the reception. Everything she found was either too ugly or too expensive. Oh how I wish she’d told me about this BEFORE the wedding, or I could have helped! Even though it’s too late to help her now, I thought this would be a great project to do for the rest of you, because there are always tons of occasions where favor boxes come in handy. You can use them for bridal or baby showers, birthday parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and so on. Heck, you could even use these for Halloween trick-or-treaters if you’re so inclined. Oh, the possibilities!
First is the most fun part — choosing the cardstock. You can use absolutely any patterned cardstock
Next, download my favor box template and the matching folding guide:
To get the template pattern onto your paper, you have two options. One method is to print a single template, cut it out, and trace around it onto each sheet of cardstock, then cut the shape out of the cardstock. This method will let you make the most of your cardstock scraps, but it is time-consuming and can lead to imperfect results.
My preferred method is to print the favor box template directly onto the cardstock. Just trim your cardstock to 8.5″ x 11″ and feed it right through your printer. Then cut each one out and you’re ready to go.
With all your templates printed and cut, and with a copy of the color-coded folding guide at your side, you’re ready to go.
Now we’ll score all our folds. To do this, you’ll need a ruler or straight edge and a bone folder.
Then do the same thing for the yellow line and then the green line on the folding guide.
Now look at the four light blue lines on the folding guide, and score each of those.
Your scoring is now completed, but let me take a moment to show you another scoring technique which you may find easier.
Instead of keeping your folding guide on the desk next to you, try cutting it out and laying it on top of the box piece. Then your score lines are right there where you can easily see them, and you can score right through the template and the box piece at the same time. You’ll have to press a little harder, but this can be a great way to keep things lined up. In fact, you may want to try this technique for the first couple of boxes you make, until you get a good feel for it!
With your box fully scored, it’s time to now fold it. Just bend each of the score lines and they’ll fold easily. You’ll end up with something that looks like this:
To put the box together, the first thing you need to do is attach the two ends so that you’ve got a box shape. There’s a little tab on one end that needs to be taped to the other end, and I’ve got a really easy trick for making that line up perfect and straight.
Flip the piece over so the inside is on top (isn’t my double-sided card stock gorgeous?) and the tallest part of the box is on the right. Fold that tall part over on the first crease.
Now take a strip of double-sided tape and stick it on the tab, right where I’m pointing in this picture. You might like to try the double-sided tape sheets that we sell in our Amazon store, because they are super sticky, so your boxes won’t come apart.
Lift the left end of the box and bend it along the first fold line. When folded, it should meet the other end of the box perfectly.
Press firmly to secure the tape, and when you let go you’ll see that you now have a box shape forming.
Find the top of the box and bend in the two side flaps, then tuck in the lid.
This will give you a nice flat surface which will help you put together the bottom of the box, which is a little trickier.
For the bottom of the box, start by folding in the square tab that has the notch in it. Then fold in the two side pieces.
Now fold in the fourth flap, and gently push it down at the center, which will push the other flaps out of the way slightly.
When you’ve (gently!) pushed far enough, you will hear a slight snap as the tab pops into the hole. When you release pressure, the flaps will move back in place and you’ll have a nice, smooth box bottom.
Ta-da! The box is done!
Well, it’s done unless you want to fill it and embellish it, that is! There are tons of things you can tuck inside the box, like Jordan almonds
And when it comes to embellishing the box, you have lots of options. You can tuck the lid’s flap inside the box or you can leave it out. If you leave it out, you could even add a little self-stick Velcro dot
And a satin ribbon tied around the box in a cute little bow will send you way off the cuteness charts.
You could even print your photo (or other emblem) onto cute little 1″ round stickers
Readers, we’d love to hear more ideas on how to decorate these boxes and more uses for them besides wedding favors. Please share your ideas in the comments!
32 comments so far:
These are just the sweetest boxes I have seen. I love them! Great job and very creative!
Thanks, Gardenia!
You can also recycle nice cards (birthday cards, Christmas cards, etc) to make gifts boxes that are a good size for gift cards.
Great idea, Jody! I might have to try that out.
Beautiful little box! It would make a great way to package polymer clay jewelry for gift boxes. Thanks for the idea!
Oh, good thinking, Cindy! I bet you can really use something like this for your awesome polymer clay creations
Definitely using this for my cookie packaging for our cookie swap! Thank you so much!
this is crazy CUTE!!!!!!!!!! Totally love it! Thanks so much for sharing!
Hey this is really Awesome!!!!!!!! i love it!!!!!
These are going to work great for my daughters Valentine gift for her class. Thanks for all your great ideas.
great idea. I am making these little boxes as a bridal shower favor for my sister. I am going to make homemade tea bags and have the girls fill them with different ingredients. These boxes will be the perfect thing to put the tea bags in!
Hayley, that is a gorgeous idea. We’d love to see how the tea bags come out. Please share a photo after the shower if you can!
These are some fantastic ideas. You have inspired me. My daughter is getting married in June and we will be using the the wedding program template and the wedding favor boxes. Thank you so much for sharing your projects. Do you have any ideas for making wedding favors? Some of those would be really helpful, (giggle), as if you haven’t already been. You seem to be really savvy when it comes to being creative. I appreciate your input. ☺
Hi Rose! Thanks so much for the kind words about our site. We don’t have a lot of favor ideas on the site right now, but have you seen our LifeSavers candy party favors? They’re one of my favorites. We’re always coming up with new ideas, so keep checking back and maybe you’ll see something from us soon. Good luck with the wedding!
This is great!! Thank you so much!!
how do you download and transfer it to the cricut
i know sounds silly i don’t have anything to down on is there a special program to buy
i have the expression
Laurie, as far as I know, you will just need to print our template onto paper and manually cut them out. I don’t know how to get the Cricut to cut designs that aren’t on a cartridge. If any of our Cricut expert readers out there know of the program, I would LOVE to hear about it and how to use it.
This is the best instructions I’ve gotten on how to fold a box, and I’ve looked at a lot! Thank you so much. I plan on making them for my sister’s wedding next year. Patricia
Patricia, glad we could help! We would love to have you share the ones you make in our Flickr group.
These are super cute! I am getting married in Feb and will be using these for our wedding favour box. We are going to use black with black ribbon and put some lovely mints inside. I just had a go at making one it was pretty easy and looks really good! Thanks so much for sharing
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Jacinta, congratulations on your upcoming wedding. We are glad we could help you out. Please share a photo of your boxes in our Flikr group.
Loved the box pattern! I made 24 for a bridal shower–used your idea for fabric scanned for the cardstock…dark purple print outside and lace backed with purple for the inside. To save printer ink, I first made a master sheet of the purple fabric, copied the pattern on the back and cut it out. For additional boxes, I just printed the lace on one side and the cut-out dark purple on the other. Worked great!
Susan, that sounds amazing! Using the scanned fabric technique to make custom cardstock for these boxes was a brilliant idea! We’d love to see how they came out if you want to send us a photo or add one to our Flickr group. Also, that was a great idea for conserving ink.
Good job….a great idea!!!
This is a great thing to do I’m having a quincienera (sweet 15) and I am planing to use this for my party favors im just going to buy some stickers with my picture and stick them onto the party favor boxes which i plan to make blue. THX SOOOOOOO Much
Isabel, sounds like a wonderful favor! We’d love to see a photo of what you create. Congrats on your Quincienera
This pattern is fantastic! I reversed it in order to be able to print it on the back of the card stock as it made it easier to see to cut it out. The instructions were perfect and the boxes turned out great! I made 30 of them for baby shower favors. (The theme was “B” is for boy.) I used a mix of geometric navy/white patterned card stock then glued on little “collars” and ribbon bow ties/regular neckties. They turned out great. Thanks so much!
Sounds adorable, Nancy! We’d love to see a pic if you want to add one to our Flickr group for reader photos. Great idea to print on the back, too.
This is such an awesome design. Can’t wait to make them for my wedding. I plan to fill them with flower seeds and bulbs!!
What a fun idea, Angeline. I’ve never seen that before and think it will be so charming.
Thank you soooo much! I got cardstock on sale 2 packs for $1.18 at Michael’s Crafts & 2 spools of ribbon for $2.30… so the $50 nightmare price for the boxes i wanted became a $3.50 Reality!
http://i40.tinypic.com/ou48cp.jpg
Here is the link to the photo of the first one I made! Again…. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!!!
Emmi, so glad we could help make these boxes affordable for you. You got a great deal at Michael’s, too! I absolutely love your photo, thanks for sharing.