by Noreen Doll.
I love to make a gift box from a cereal box. It’s one of my favorite kinds of boxes for gift wrapping.
One of the things I like about cereal boxes is that they come in many different sizes and can be used to package all kinds of items.
After you’ve used them, you don’t have to store them. You can recycle them or use them again for paper crafting.
Cereal boxes make great covers for books or notebooks. They can be used for the bottom piece on a pad of paper.
Or glue them to other boxes to make them sturdier.
Here’s a little tutorial on one very easy way to make a cereal box into a gift box. Of course, you can just use the box as it is, but this box was a few inches too tall for the book I wanted to put in it.
So here is how I made the box over to perfectly fit the book. (The recipient was very impressed with how well the book fit the box!) And the corners of the book could not tear through the wrapping paper.
These boxes can also be used for wrapping clothes and many odd shapes and sizes of gifts.
What You Need
Empty Cereal Box
Scissors
Ruler
Pen
Scoring Tool (can be the scissors tip or any fairly pointed object)
Here’s what the original box looked like.
What You Do
1. I measured down 2 1/2 inches from the top flap fold on the back side of the box, and cut this part off.
Just cut off the back and not the sides.
2. Cut down the front corners of the box (between the box front and sides) also 2 1/2 inches. Don’t cut the sides off.
3. Lay the ruler across the bottom of the cut on both front and sides and score. Then fold toward the inside of the box.
4. Measure the depth of the box from front to back. You will use this number (3 1/8 on this box) to know where to score for the tuck in flap.
Measure from the original score line toward the top of the flap, 3 1/8 inches, and score again here. Fold toward the inside of the box.
5. Cut the sides of the top flap at an angle to allow the flap edge to tuck easily into the box.
6. Here’s how the finished top will look.
For a neater box you can cut off the two white parts on the side flaps. I left them on to help contain the gift.
Tips
If you want to hide the cereal box look, you can carefully pull it apart at the seams.
Turn it inside out so the brown is on the outside, and glue it back together.
Another way to hide the logo is to cover the box with gift wrap or designer paper. Either double sided tape or glue can be used for this.
Since I gift wrapped the box, I didn’t worry about what the outside of it looked like, as it was hidden by the wrapping paper.
Noreen Doll
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