From calendars to boxes

Calendar pages (the kind you hang on a wall) are often square.   Calendar pages are often pretty.  Ergo, calendar pages are great material for making origami, especially if you want to make fairly durable, stiff objects.   

Like these gift boxes, which I made out of last year's Cow Yoga calendar. 


I followed the directions at the website https://origami.me/box/, and it was really pretty easy to do, once I go the hang of it (for example, I discovered that calendar paper is so stiff that I used a wooden spatula instead of my fingers to "iron" out the creases).  I made 6 "tops", and then trimmed the pages just a little to make 6 "bottoms" that fit inside.  The end result was a bunch of really nice boxes that I could put small gifts in, or even just give to my granddaughter for stacking and knocking down.

A friend sends us calendars of his photos every year.  Lately, he's been photographing protests.   Here's a photo of the 6 boxes I made from last year's protest calendar:

They're lined up on my husband's dresser, because he's the protest pro around here!

As for my own pro passion, I offer a math geeky aside:  One of the questions on the website above is

"This is great – thanks! Would love to know what size paper you need to make different sized boxes if you know? Else I will have to find out by practicing I suppose."

and the author responds,

I believe the length and width of the bottom of the final box is roughly 1/4 the size of the original paper. Hope that helps!

But *actually*, the boxes are 1/sqrt(8) the size of the original paper. (That's a tad bigger than 1/3). The calendar pages I used were 12 inches square; the boxes came out about 4.5" wide and 2.25 as deep.  So now you know.