How to make an inexpensive, collapsible light box.

This weekend I finally decided to try my hand at making a light box. I liked a tutorial I found over at DPS where the maker used a box as his structure. It's a great, inexpensive way to make your own light box. Its downside, however, is that it's not collapsible. There was only one thing I could do: Grab a piece of paper and pencil and see if I could come up with a way to adapt the tutorial.

To make one you'll need:

• cardboard
• a utility knife
• tissue paper,
• tape or glue-stick
• mailing/packaging/or duct tape
• a straight-edge
• matte poster board

First, I cut five pieces of cardboard into 18" squares and then cut 14" squares inside 3 of the squares. Then I laid them out as shown below.

Next I taped tissue paper over the holes of the 3 squares.

Then I taped the five squares together, making hinges using packing tape. I started with the lower left square, which I folded up, laying it on the square right above. I taped my hinges, and then unfolded the lower left square.

I moved on to the center square, which I folded over on top of the left square. Again, I made two tape hinges.

Next was the far right square. I folded it over on top of the middle square and made my hinges.

Finally, I folded down the top right square and made my hinges.

When I was done, I reinforced each hinge by tapping over them on the sticky side/side facing me.

I then added small strips of cardboard as shown below to act as stops for my poster board. As it turned out, I only needed the one on the bottom left square.

This is how the whole thing folds together into a cube:

And this how it looks when folded together for storage:

Here's a pic with the poster board in place:

See how the stop stops the poster board from sliding down?

And here's some pictures taken using my new collapsible light box:

To see how I made the 'flower ball' in the picture, check out this post over on diymaven.com!

---

March 23, 2009
1220 views

2 comments

---

DIY Maven's blog (2227 posts)

About Me: Check out my website diymaven.com for all my original how-to's! Although I'm a writer by education and profession (MFA Hamline University, BA University of Minnesota), I...

Subscribe to this blog