Making Pop-up Cards

Art has always been one of my favorite subjects. This summer I decided to make my mom a box of different festival cards because I haven't seen her for a year. I got interested in doing something fancy so I bought this book called Making Pop-Ups and Novelty Cards. Now I want to learn to do new things with paper that I have never tried before. I'm going to start simple with the beginner's project even though what I made for my mom was complicated. I'm hoping this book will make doing cards and projects like this easier than the four days it took me to do my mom's project this summer. I think it's a skill that I can use in the future to create unique cards that people will not find in stores.


Today I'm going to show you how to do a basic V/A fold. The materials and equipment that are listed in the book are an A6 paper, a bone folder, a cutting mat, a metal ruler, a craft knife, and an embossing tool. Instead of buying new A6 papers, I cut the normal white sheet of paper, which is a size of A4, in half twice so it ended up with four pieces of A6 papers. Also, I replaced the cutting mat with a random cardboard because I couldn't find one. And let's get started!

First, I used the craft knife to cut the A4 paper into pieces, but the edges didn't turn out to be perfectly nice and clean so I used the scissors to cut off the rough edges to create a straight line. After that, I folded the A6 paper in half and used a ruler and a craft knife to make a horizontal cut about two-thirds of the way down the card, cutting from the fold to less than halfway across (Trish Phillips & Ann Montanaro).

Then, I used an embossing tool to indent a line from one-third of the way along the fold down to the end of the cut (Trish Phillips & Ann Montanaro). When you're done, push the triangle out and fold it along the lines. You'll have something like this:

And that's it! A basic V/A fold. It's easy, isn't it? Okay I know it looks really simple and boring so I decided to design it as a Christmas card.

I glued on another green piece of paper to add a background to the card and gave it a more finished look. Without it, you can see a triangular hole from the back and it doesn't look as fancy. And here you go! An unique Christmas card for your friend, your family, or anyone!

This Christmas card took me about 30 minutes total including the cutting, pasting, and drawing. Drawing takes the most amount of time, but it really depends on how you want to design it. Overall, I'm glad that this project turned out good and it didn't even take much time. The only thing to be careful of is when you're using the craft knife. Also, when you're gluing on the card to the other sheet of paper, make sure to not put glue on the triangle shape that you cut and indented, otherwise it wouldn't be a pop-up card.






Has anybody else tried to make pop-up cards before? What is your experience?


Citation:
Phillips, Trish and Ann Montanaro. Making Pop-Ups & Novelty Cards. Leicestershire: Lorenz Books, 2011. Print.