Make: An Origami Box for Nature Collections

As part of our celebration of Shinrin-Yoku and quality time spent in the great outdoors, we made a set of origami nature boxes – perfect for collecting and keeping all of your outdoor finds – flowers, rocks, leaves, shells…bugs…! The best part? It only takes 3 pieces of paper! That’s it!

There are some easy folds and some harder folds throughout this process, so we recommend adult supervision/help for this one. Once finished the box is amazingly sturdy – making it the perfect small collector to throw in a backpack or carry along for a hike.

Want to take outdoor nature investigation to the next level? See how we recycled a shoebox and other scrap items to make our own upcycled nature explorer’s kit!

To make your own nature collection origami box you’ll need:

We found the amazing tutorial below that will take you through each fold step-by-step. If you’d like a sturdier box that can be tossed into a backpack or mucked up a bit, we recommend using cardstock instead of traditional origami paper.

And don’t worry about making perfect folds or creases or lining everything up – we didn’t and the final product still works and actually looks awesome.  Can I also add, that knowing I can make a sturdy box out of paper anywhere, anytime in 5 minutes is oddly liberating and reassuring…!

Looking for more summer nature crafts? See how we made fairy forests out of paper straws, play dough, and nature clippings. Or grab a hammer for a super fun nature art project! And little ones will love working on their scissor skills with our simple mouse mail fine motor skill activity.

We’d love to see your collections! Tag @barleyandbirch / #barleyandbirch to share with us and if you have any questions along the way, be sure to leave them in the comments below – we made quite a few practice boxes before we got the hang of it, so we may have some tips that will help you out.