Multipurpose Newspaper Box

I have found myself having a lot of time on my hands at the time being and so have chosen to dabble in some arts and crafts and DIY projects as a hobby. And since I have time at present I am enjoying the process of blogging about this journey. I don’t claim to be an expert on arts and crafts (I’m pretty much a novice).

I realize that my video may be self-explanatory. However, considering that I have watched it a million times while editing I might feel so. Someone who wants to follow my procedure might feel I went too fast or did not explain the process completely. This post is mainly for those people. If you enjoy reading about my process then do let me know.

So getting to my process in making the newspaper box

The biggest task in the whole thing was to prepare the strips of paper I used. Like I mentioned in my video, I cut the conventional single side of the newspaper into eight equal pieces each (roughly). I didn’t bother much about the exact measures. I was always going for a rustic image. And furthermore when you coiled pieces of newspaper I didn’t observe it to make too much of a difference.

As you can see in the above picture, I fold the newspaper into half 3 times to divide the sheet into 8 pieces. I then cut it against the folds. I make several of these strips.

Following this I mentioned how I fold these strips further into different sizes

1. For the base of the coil I fold it into 1/4^thsize (each strip is folded twice)- Strips A

2. For the border I fold it into ½ size (each strip is folded only once)- Strips B

3. For the coil in the lid I fold each into 1/6^thsize (I first divide the strip in 3 parts and then in half again)- Strips C

These are the choices for size that I have chosen. If you choose to recreate you need not necessarily do the same. I have purposely folded and stuck each strip and not further cut them into smaller pieces. This is because when you fold and then coil the thickness would also be there.

After I have all my strips ready I build up the base by coiling the strip A using the paper quilling tool. I keep building on this coil until I get the desired size for the base. Now I stick the base onto the cardboard base. I had originally cut the cardboard into 8cm x 8cm size square and covered it with a plain white paper. However when I stuck the coil onto the base even though I did make it into a squarish looking shape I still felt it would be better to have a circular base. Otherwise when I would stick the border it would have some empty spots.

Once I was done with the base, I coiled the strip B with the paper quilling tool into pellet like shapes. These coils were slightly thinner and taller. I stuck these in a concentric pattern around the base coil. Now since I wanted a certain depth I chose to add a second layer. A tip here is that if instead of a box you want to make a penstand you can continue to add layers of these pellets till it becomes taller and then exclude making the lid.

To make the lid I make a similar coil like I did for the base. I made it to the size that just about fit in between the borders. Once I was done with that I wanted to make a locking mechanism so I made some coils with the strip C. For this I used the ring coil tool for paper quilling and chose the size I wanted from the tool. I then coiled the strip C and stuck the edges. Once I had two of these I used a small folded piece of paper (not too particular about the size) and coiled it locking the two bigger coils. When I had enough of these I stuck these on the top of the lid and thus my lid was complete.

I then painted it and was done with the box. Now I know that there are a lot of newspaper boxes on the internet. This is just my version of it and I feel this is a very sturdy box especially if you need to store some heavier trinkets.

If you have not seen my video on the making then I do recommend you watch that for better clarity. The link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HrVMxS4Yfk&feature=youtu.be. Further if you enjoy it do subscribe. I will try to come up with some new diy craft as soon as possible.