Egyptian celebration pop-up card

This pop-up card depicts Egyptians celebrating around a modern style decorated birthday cake. The background of the card is hieroglyphics on the left describing the occassion for celebration with a translation in English on the opposing side.

There really isn't that much to the mechanism of the pop-up. It's based on a series of hexagram rings attached on two sides parallel to the central fold of the card. The outer band is the most narrow. Twelve figures and objects are attached to the band. The other two bands are broader and comprise the sides of the cake. The smaller ring is stacked on top of the larger ring, the roof if you like. The tops of the cake rings (the roofs) are hexagons with a central fold in alignment with and positioned directly above the central fold of the card, so that all three surfaces fold together, actually the movement of folding the card forces the stack of folds. There are different ways to construct this, either with a central spine with the tiered surfaces attached to it, or as here, with the tiered surfaces attached to separate stacks of I-bar constructions.  The tops are attached to the rings with tabs that are aligned with the tabs holding the rings to the card also parallel to the central fold.  Basically it's three concentric hexagon strips, two with lids and stacked. That is all. 

I neglected to think about photographing until I was nearly done because I was zipping along. Therefore, I drew the following patterns to illustrate. The top pattern is 1/2 of a strip that forms a hexagon with a large tab that attaches it to the base of the card and a small tab to attach it to another strip identical to itself, the pattern is repeated five times for a total of six strips, but in three different sizes, the largest hexagonal ring, the outer one, is much more narrow than the other two and it holds the figures around the cake. Originally the idea was for a three tier cake but I saw I didn't have enough room so I settled for two tiers instead of arranging for a larger background. As it turned out, when I attached the figures I discovered my background was too small anyway which forced an adjustment for the outer cover, but by that time I was over making cake tiers.  This is a problem that arises from not building prototypes, but I don't care.  This card was a one-shot deal, I would just have to settle for whatever happened, unless it was a complete disaster, of course.  

The figures were all scratched out as if drawing hieroglyphs.  I drew guide lines to determine their height then just raced through unitl I had twelve. I didn't bother measuring anything. I determined if they were too broad to fit the segments, then I'd overlap them. They all have a very sketchy appearance.

The message reads:

Viewing the splendor of The celebration of the drink festival Making a day of rejoicing In recognition of A yearly event The day of  The birth of (birthday person) Year 2009

The glyph for "birth" that depicts a baby dropping out head first with tiny arms extended from the bottom of a seated woman is avoided, even though it cracks me up every time I draw it and I do love sticking it in birthday cards.  I must be growing up or something.

Incidentally, if you enter your name into an online hieroglyphic translator you'll get something a little bit different from how I might translate your name. The reason for that is all of the online translators are restricted to one-syllable glyphs to approximate the name sounds. They ignore available glyphs for two-syllable and three-syllable sounds which are abundant, as well as the occasional 4-syllable word that could be employed as rebus.  In this case the name John would probably be translated automatically as DJ-ah-n (snake, Egyptian eagle, water zigzag), there is no proper J.  But there is a sign for Dj-ah (fire drill), a savings of one glyph, although the cool snake and eagle is forfeited.  Oddly though, as yet I haven't seen a glyph for ah-n, and I've checked every source available to me which is considerable, a common enough phoneme you'd expect to have it's own sign, or to have a word assigned to it.  I haven't given up though, if I ever see one, believe me, I'll use it immediately.

tree pop-up card

This pop-up is intended as a thank you card. It is adapted from an item in Masahiro Chatani's Paper Magic. I'm not certain Chatani's tree was meant for a card as most the items in the book are architectural. Chatani prefers to attach things with thread, I prefer tabs. His tree looks like a valentine, it has cut out love birds and heart shapes throughout. I omitted those. 

The recipient of  this card  hosts a yard party that highlights their extensive garden at the end of the season. This card reflects that. There is no message except a separate leaf that says "Thank you," and the year. There is no indication as to who the card is from, I assume they will deduce that, if not, then I rather like that too. I wouldn't mind if the card was recycled for another purpose if they so choose, and if not, then that's fine too.

There isn't much to the construction of this card, most the work involves cutting out the two portions of the tree. Neither is there much instruction in Paper Magic, save for attaching the tree with thread, which I did not follow, and a template that I did not use. When the tree is attached to the base with tabs located on two of the four portions touching the base, and not with thread at a single point where those two segments meet at the center, the length of those tabs being glued at converging angles force the tree downward tilting the trunk by that angle when the card is closed, so the opposite portions of the trunk that are cut to a pattern intended to be attached with thread at the center point, do not allow the tree to angle downward and inward. In other words, the bottom edges of the unattached portions of the tree trunk are in the way of the card folding. This doesn't happen when the the tree is attached with thread at a single point at the very center (two points, actually, one for each half of the tree trunk that meet at that spot, so the point is shared, as it were.) In that case the tree never does tilt. For my tree, I snipped off a nick at the bottom of the unattached portions of the tree trunk  in order to clear the way for the tree trunk to swing. This causes the tree to appear not fully anchored when the card is opened and the tree erect, and this wouldn't be a problem if the tree trunk flipped the opposite direction, and it is possible to design a tree trunk that does that, but this arrangement  flips the tree in the undesired direction.  Thread. Tab. One method is slightly more elegant, the other slightly more dramatic.  I like the tab method of attachment  better because the tree actualy does pop up and expands in width simultaneously, instead of never tilting downward on closing thus never popping back into positon when opened. See? It's all about the drama when the card is opened -- not just the tree expanding width-wise, but BANG! actually popping up.  What can I say? It's the boy in me, I like that.

hieroglyphic owl pop-up card

Inspired by a page in Robert Sabuda's Chronicles of Narnia. This interpretation shifts from the Narnia owl to a  hieroglyphic owl.  In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the owl  means a lot of things, which is why you see it so much, but chief among its meanings is the consonsonant sound "m." 

I did not begin soon enough and ran out of time with this card so I rushed the finish.  I made compromises for the sake of getting it into the mail that I otherwise would not have made. Once the wings were attached, the mechanism did not fit inside the outer dimensions of the card which was already established. The wings that did fit were too stubby. Ordinarily I would have started over with a smaller mechanism so that I could have the desired wingspan and the predetermined outer dimensions. Instead, I cut the height of the supports twice to try to get it to fit. When that failed, I cut the entire background out in parts and glued them onto a new background with the dimensions that fit the mechanism and with a wingspan I could live with, I also  rearranged the hieroglyphic message for the new background. I also compromised with the complexity of the wing mechanism. Sabuda uses a more complex mechanism to fold the two portions of each wing. I eliminated that folding arrangement and attached the two portions (four total) to the bottom of the bird and to the back of the support. My wings fold differently than Sabuda's wings, and the two portions of  each pair are not connected, so the bird appears to have four wings. That's OK. I know of Egyptian geese depicted with three wings, two flying and one folded.

Due to time constraint, I also decided to make an envelope that fit the card instead of a mummiform wrapping which is what I intended. Also I decided on not making an elaborate fresco cover for the card that would have taken a few more days -- plaster drying, watercolor painting, staining, matt cutting, binding, etc. -- instead I drew the owl hieroglyph on heavy Bristol paper and treated it as a painting. I don't feel so bad about this, after all, this is exactly the sort of thing the Egyptians themselves would have done when pressed for time or short of funds or working within constrained space. You might be surprised at the shortcuts Egyptians took continuously, in addition to their deeply held philosophy on not finishing anything completely. And not just abbreviating standard compositions on the walls either,  they even smashed dead pharaohs into their caskets, breaking bones and bashing their noses in order to force fit them inside when the dimensions weren't quite exactly right.  And that's just wrong!

The message related in hieroglyphics inside the card is a simple birthday message that includes the name of the recipient and the date.  I also included a translation separately with a brief explanation of my choice of spelling and arrangement  for the name.  Oddly, I can find no word for party or for celebration.  I know Egyptians had a lot of banquets because there are so many paintings of them, but there's a big difference between banquet and a simple birthday celebration.  I substituted the word for "festival," although a birthday celebration is not quite a festival either, one must make allowances and it does convey the idea.  

This is the finished head and body ↓

winged scarab pop-up card

The winged scarab pop-up card consists of two pop-up mechanisms on a background of hieroglyphics set within a card braced with rigid matt board. Its cover is a tiny fresco framed with a double matt, the card is more of a small book of four layers of matt board with two thicknesses of 100 LB Bristol along with the folded mechanisms.

The mechanisms depict first a dung beetle rolling a ball of dung and second a winged scarab lifted upward and forward on two rigid paper pillars. The background depicts Egyptian hieroglyphics that convey a birthday message along with a typical Egyptian warning.  A separate hand-written document is included that transliterates the glyphs and translates them into English. A separate card is included within that document that makes clear the meaning of the cover, which is also a glyph.

Card cover

The card being opened.

The opened card

The card has no envelope, rather, it is wrapped in a preposterous length of thin paper with hieroglyphic amulets drawn on both sides of Bristol paper inserted between the folds. It is then further wrapped in a large thin cotton bar towel with more paper protective amulets between the cloth folds and finally belted with a strip of that same cloth and tied with a square knot.

Card wrappings and extraneous material.

Card wrapped.

The mechanisms took some time to work out and required several prototypes each. I kept making one mistake or another that prevented the mechanism from working or prevented them from folding flat. It took up to eight tries for each mechanism until I finally got something that worked reliably for both mechanisms. I went through a lot of card stock and Bristol paper for this card.

The principle of the dung beetle mechanism is the crimped corners of folded tab that is slightly elevated on the right side of the card and attached to the left half of the card at a 90˚ angle at that same elevation. The tab is elevated as a table when the card is in the 90˚ half opened position, and lays flat with the crimps spread wide open when the card is fully opened, and lays flat with the crimps pressed closed when the card is closed. This crimp closed to crimp opened creates a movement in the angle of the crimp as the card is opened that is exploited. It is a tiny crimp and a tiny angle and tiny spot of glue, but a decent movement that can be translated to a rotation with the use of a tiny arm. This was the tricky bit.

The following diagram depicts one of the crimps in the tab, there are actually two that face each other. The arms glued to the crimps, half of the crimp actually, move in opposite directions so the discs glued to the arms appear to rotate in opposite directions. With a dung ball drawn on one disc, and a beetle drawn on the other, and with the discs overlapping, it appears as if the beetle is rolling the ball.

The winged scarab is a tent atop a platform constructed on a plane horizontal to an opened card.  It's lifted by two pillars that are attached on the cards central fold with a typical V mechanism. The V is centered with the central fold of the card and the two Vs are parallel with each other. They're unusually tall Vs and thin so they're more like pillars than regular V tabs to which content is attached. In this case they hold up a table that is loosely attached at the top with tabs rather than being glued. This is the bottom of the bug. When the card is opened the V tabs (pillars) flip up. Since they're parallel, they flip together. In the upright position the table that the pillars hold is flat with the base of the card. When the card is folded, the tab pillars dutifully fold back down dragging the table with it which is also forced closed in harmony with the card, as its fold and orientation is aligned with the card. After all this is established, a tent is designed to top the table which becomes the top of the bug, also with a fold aligned with the card's fold, but this time the fold is in the opposite direction. So whereas the bottom of the bug folds as the card folds, the top of the bug folds in the opposite direction, but it's still attached at the sides so it can not go anywhere. The legs of the bug are just a matter of extending the bottom of the bug. In this case, they're glued separately.

Wings are a different matter. They consist of another table mechanism with extraordinarily short legs. The table consists of three short posts one on the central fold and one on each side, all three post are wide as the wing itself. The posts are shaped vaguely as an I-bar. The posts are attached to the upper side of the bottom of the bug. So the wings amounts to a table on a table set on two pillars, covered by a tent. A slot is provided on the top (the tent) of the bug to allow for flappy movement of the wings as they fold and unfold forced by attachment with the movement of the card.

It isn't complicated, but it does take a bit of precision, which runs counter to my slap-dash tendencies.

The picture painted for the cover is the glyph for "rejoice," some read "praise."

The message inside the card reads:

"He who opens this card without giving good birthday praise and gladdening the heart, I will wring his neck like a bird."

There. That should ensure everybody at least says, "Happy Birthday" when they open the card. The thing that amuses me is the glyph for "birth" is a picture of a little baby dropping out of a seated woman. This is 100% of fact, although I'm fairly certain Egyptians didn't celebrate birthdays as we do today. Plus the idea of including an inactionable threat along with a birthday greeting just strikes me as funny.