The sliding lid box template, flat and folded
What this template is for
A box whose lid slides in and out along grooves, like a wooden pencil case: lips along the top of the sides and back, rails underneath, and a lid with a thumb notch. Pens, chocolates, keepsakes and puzzle gifts.
Also called slide top box · slide lid box · pencil case box · grooved lid box — all the same shape, and this is it.
- Pen, pencil and brush boxes
- Chocolate and sweet boxes
- Keepsake and puzzle gift boxes
- Board-game and card storage
How to use this template
All four downloads are the same sliding lid box at the same size — only the format changes.
- PDF printing at home
- Print at 100 per cent, or hand it to a print shop as "actual size, no scaling".
- PNG 300 dpi Canva, Photoshop, Procreate
- Upload, lock it in place and design your sliding lid box on top. Free plan and phone included. Full Canva walkthrough →
- SVG Cricut, Illustrator, Inkscape, Affinity
- Vector, with cuts, folds and labels on separate layers. Cricut and Silhouette walkthrough →
- DXF Silhouette, laser and vinyl cutters
- Two layers, CUT and FOLD — and the one free Silhouette Studio Basic will open.
Printing it
- Type your size above, then download the PDF.
- Print at 100% — never “fit to page”, or every measurement comes out wrong.
- Too big for the paper? Pick your paper size and leave Fit the pieces to the page ticked: each piece gets its own place on a sheet and the PDF comes out with every page in it, nothing cut in half and nothing to tape.
How to put it together
These pictures are the sliding lid box itself, not a generic diagram — change the measurements above and the template changes, but the three steps never do.
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Cut the solid lines
Every solid line is a cut. Do the inside shapes first, while the sheet is still whole and easy to hold.
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Score every dashed line
Dashed lines are folds. Score each one first — an empty ballpoint against a ruler — or the card cracks along the outside of the bend.
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Fold, glue and hold
Score every dashed line. Fold the walls up and glue each SIDE's end tabs inside the FRONT and the BACK. Fold the lips in along the tops of the sides and back, the mitred ends meeting. Glue the BACK RAIL inside the back and a SIDE RAIL inside each side, flush with the base: the gap between rail and lip is the groove. Slide the LID in over the front, notch first out.
Glue: a glue stick for paper, white PVA on card — hold each seam thirty seconds, and let it dry before you use it.
Questions about the sliding lid box
- How does the lid slide?
- The side and back walls each have a lip folded in along the top. Rails glued inside those walls stop one lid thickness plus a millimetre below the lips, so there is a groove under each lip. The front wall is only as tall as the rails, so the lid slides in over it, runs in the grooves and rests on the rails.
- What size is the default box?
- A box 120 × 60 mm and 30 mm deep, on 0.5 mm card: the grooves are 1.5 mm tall and the lid is 119.2 × 58.4 mm, so it clears the walls by 0.3 mm a side. The tray, rails and lid print on A4 or US Letter paper.
- How wide are the lips?
- 6 mm by default. A lip is at least the board plus 3 mm wide, so it holds the lid by 2 mm on each side, and no wider than a quarter of the box; the page says when it has moved it.
Print your own design on it
Add a logo, photo or pattern in the panel on the left and drag it onto the sliding lid box. It is trimmed to the cut outline, embedded properly in the PDF, and never leaves your computer — most free template sites hand you the outline and stop there. How printing your own design works.
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