Making My Own Origami Advent Calendar

Last week on December 1st, I realised that I didn’t have an Advent Calendar! I’m sure that this is practically sacreligious, or at the very least is against tradition in our house. Georgie was kind enough to bring me to tesco on our lunch break, but alas, all advent calendars were sold. Next stop was co-op, but to our dismay, all sold out. Then we trekked to another shop but by this stage we were very hungry and had lost all hope in the shops of Guildford. But I had faith in my creativity, and knew that I would be able to come up with some way of making an advent calendar for myself. And, I did. And I am going to share it with you now.

This is quite a simple paper-folding technique to make little pouches, inside which I am placing a single ferrero rocher chocolate. YUMMY! These would also make cool table decorations and perhaps even nice wedding or party favors.

All you need is some 6×6 paper and a stapler. you could cut down scrapbook paper to size, but I used a pack of Dovecraft 6×6 pattern paper which is really cost efficient as you get 48 sheets in a pack for only £3.99.

So let’s get started. I’ll walk you through step by step and remember that if any point I don’t make sense or you are having difficulty understanding, please leave a comment or email me so I can clarify.

To start, take a piece of 6×6 pattern paper and place White side up.

Fold bottom corner up as of to fold diagonally but instead of folding in half, fold it short by about an inch.

Run your fingernail along folded edge to make sure it’s nice & creased. Then open back up.

Rotate the paper 90 degrees and repeat this fold.

Do this same fold for all 4 corners. When you have done this, you will now have 4 creases, and they will cross over to form an X with a square in the centre.

Now to make the sides so they can fold in neatly. For this you will need to pick a corner and fold the tip in half so the pattern is on the inside.

As you pinch the top, the bottom bit will fold into a triangle shape. Pinch to crease these lines into the paper.

Repeat on the opposite side. Your paper will now look like this.

If you look at your project, each side of the square of paper has a triangle creased into it. Pick a side and find the two creases that make a triange, and fold so that they touch. Crease with your fingernail from the corner of the inner square, out to the edge of the paper. Use the photo as a guide.

Unfold and turn 90 degrees then repeat until all 4 sides have been done.

Woohoo. We have made all the creases, we just need to fold it all up. Place a choccy on the paper within the creased square.

Fold up the bottom corner, and then fold in the left and the right side, lining up the tips so they hide behind the first flap you folded up.

Then fold up the last flap to meet the top and pinch tightly to hold all the flaps in half whilst you reach for your stapler.

To finish, fold over all the flaps and put a staple through all layers to secure in place.

Hope that all made sense. (Life will hopefully be easier when I have a video camera).

So for my advent calendar, I made 25 of these little beauties and finished them off by sticking numbers on the bottom.

So there you have it, my advent calendar. Each little pyramid, filled with heavenly chocolate, lies lined up along my dresser, and each day i get to unravel one, after I find the right one of course. Have fun playing with this technique and don’t forget to leave me a comment here.