Origami Advent Calendar With Boxes - How to Fold It | Tutorial

Advent time – that means 24 funny and beautiful surprises until Christmas Eve, that much is clear. This is how to make an own Origami Advent calendar with Boxes that looks pretty awesome.

Do you open a window, lift a lid or peek inside a little bag every day during Advent? As a child, you eagerly await the little surprises hiding in the Origami Advent calendar every day. Advent is a great time full of little wonders.

If you want to make an Advent calendar yourself, you will come across a flood of great ideas. The quickest and easiest option is to buy an Advent calendar craft kit – for example from our top 10 most beautiful DIY Advent calendar kits – as you get everything you need as a complete package. But for all those who want to get really creative and design a unique Advent calendar according to their ideas, there are free instructions for making different DIY Advent calendars at Abenteuer Freundschaft!

How to Make a Origami Advent Calendar

This Origami Advent calendar consists of 24 beautiful hexagonal boxes that make wonderful Advent room decorations. The highlight: We have calculated the dimensions of the boxes in such a way that the pretty boxes can be stacked inside each other and can be wonderfully stored away to save space until next year! In total, 3 boxes are always the same size and range from 7.5 cm to 11 cm in diameter (corner to opposite corner).

You should plan on spending a few hours folding the boxes (!) – but the materials for this Origami Advent calendar cost very little and it looks great! As the boxes are of different sizes, the Origami Advent calendar is suitable for just about anything you like to fill it with. 🙂

Craft Materials

• Wrapping paper/ high quality colourful wrapping paper in different colours and matching designs, here: green kraft paper, red kraft paper, brown kraft paper*, wrapping paper in beautiful designs and Christmas patterns.
• Set square – the bigger the better!
• Sharpened pencil for sketching
• Measuring tape
• Large scissors
• Paper cutter
• Double sided tape

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1. Measure and Cut

Origami is an original Japanese art of folding, which is all about accuracy. That’s why we calculated the sizes of the boxes exactly to end up with 3 of each size – so we fold 3 boxes in 8 different sizes each, which can be stored inside each other like Russian matryoshka dolls.

First think about which bottom box and which lid you want to fold from which paper and draw the dimensions of the rectangles from which the boxes will be folded on the paper.

It is best to use a triangle for exact right angles and a sharp pencil!

Measurements for the Origami Folding Boxes

1. Box: 21 cm x 29.7 cm (DIN A4) – Lid: 10.7 cm x 30 cm
2. Box: 22.5 cm x 31.8 cm – Lid: 11.5 cm x 32.3 cm
3. Box: 24 cm x 33.9 cm – Lid: 12.5 x 34.4 cm
4. Box: 25.5 cm x 36.1 cm – Lid: 13 cm x 36.6 cm
5. Box: 27 cm x 38.2 cm – Lid: 14 cm x 38.7 cm
6. Box: 28.5 cm x 40.3 cm – Lid: 14.5 cm x 40.8 cm
7. Box: 30 cm x 42.4 cm – Lid: 15.5 cm x 42.9 cm
8. Box: 31.5 cm x 44.6 cm – Lid: 16 cm x 45.5 cm

Now cut the paper pieces with a cutter (or scissors).

2. Fold the Origami Boxes

In this YouTube video you can see exactly how to fold the boxes. The most important thing is that when you fold the boxes, you fix the overlapping side panels with double-sided tape so that they don’t slip!

It takes about 15 minutes per box with a little practice – at the beginning it takes a little longer to get the hang of it. But it’s a lot of fun and you have a small sense of achievement with each box when all the folds are perfectly in place! 🙂

3. The 24 Numbers

Either you paint 24 numbers on die-cut wooden stars, buttons or circles of thick cardboard yourself and design them – or you use a set of Advent calendar numbers on wooden stars or buttons like I did.

Simply apply as large a piece of double-sided tape as possible to the back of the wooden stars and press them onto the centre of the lids.

Tip: I always number 8 boxes in ascending order of size (i.e. 1-8, 9-16, 17-24) – that way I can quickly stack them into each other after Christmas without spending a lot of time trying out how they fit together.

Have fun making your own Origami Advent calendar! 🙂

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