Welcome to my first blog-torial!

For a while, I’ve been thinking of how to advice my customers better when they receive their boxes. Recently, there’s been some interest in my Pillow Packs too. So I decided to put them together and provide a very simple tip, which I hope you will find useful!

So here it goes!

Pillow packs have been a very useful and unique packaging idea for a long time. They have an interesting look, holds small things well, the curves provide some structure, easily stored flat, and can be easily made!

Printing and cutting is no problem, but what happens to the fold lines!? How do I score curve lines accurately? Here’s my little tip for you!

First of, cut out your pillow packs. Cut out an extra identical piece too! I’ll tell you why later. I had mine cut out with my digital cutter, so that I wouldn’t need to print any “cutting” lines, for a clean box.

Next score the straight lines first.
The center:

The adhesive flap:

Next, the cover flaps. These are curved so what do you do to make it an accurate score line? I tried using a curve ruler and even did it slowly by hand, but all I got were crooked lines.
Here’s the trick – take the 2nd piece and align them as such:

Have the 2 center corners meet, and align the top and bottom corners so that the curved surface of the 2nd pillow pack cover the area that will be your flaps!

Score this part firmly but gently as you can easily slip and make lines where you don’t want to.

Now if you have many boxes to score, you would want to switch around using different pieces to do this. This helps you get an accurate hand score, but it also weakens the paper fibers of the 2nd piece. You will find that it won’t serve as a good stencil after a repeated scorings. So switch between other pieces and keep each one still usable as a box!

The next parts are pretty straightforward.
When folding the 2 center lines, always fold outside first before folding as intended. Origami instructions would say “do a valley fold first.”

So once that is done for both straight lines, next is the glueing.

Apply a generous amount of white/PVC glue. White glue is transparent when dry, so it won’t look ugly if any spill over.
Next, spread it evenly, especially to the corners.

Then press together and you will have a flat-packed pillow pack! Yay!
Leave for 5mins or more to dry and then proceed to fold.

Always start in the corner and make your way downwards following the score line to get the fold as close as possible. Since it is a curve, the paper will be a bit resistant and move into straight lines. But if you have scored it hard enough, it should fold easily into place.

Here’s a half completed one. I wasn’t careful to check which side should be the top and did it the other way around. So the surface facing you, is meant to be the top, but the flaps have been folded wrongly. When this happens, you are likely to face this problem:

The corner breaks open, also when there is not enough glue in the corner or if not dry. Having the flaps done in the correct way helps prevent this as well.

Here’s the back of the pillow pack, with the flaps done correctly:

You can see the adhesive flap should be visible only to the bottom side.

And with this, your pillow pack is done!

Before I end my blog-torial, here’s a few stationery you would want to prepare beforehand:

Starting from the top:
• Bone scorers
• Or if you don’t have one, use a thin embossing tool
• If those are not available, use the back of a butter knife! I learnt this trick from a book on pop-up cards I was browsing through once.
• Glue
• Ruler
• And lastly a cutting/protective mat, so you don’t damage your table.

So there it is! My first blog-torial! Hope it’s been helpful!

Update:
Here are 3 free templates (in PDF) for your use! If you ever need them printed and scored for you, do let me know! Click here to find out more.

Size 1: 8 x 6 x 2.5cm (3 x 2.25 x 1in)
Size 2: 10.2 x 6 x 2.5cm (4 x 2.25 x 1in)
Size 3: 10.2 x 7.5 x 2.5cm (4 x 3 x 1in)