For youz pop up card

This card was made a long time ago by playing around but never mailed or used. Looking back at entries made when I first started describing these things I noticed that and thought, "Shame to waste a perfectly serviceable pun innit." I've hardly mined the depths of that whole [you : ewe] thing and I do resist giving it up, plus my whole family generally responds positively to dumb jokes.

Now is the time of year that three birthdays coincide, and whereas I should be thinking up something fresh and unique for each person, instead, I revitalized the original idea already described here and produced the same card for each person. You might prefer that link ← for a more thorough description of a single card. In some ways it is a better card. This page describes the production of three cards at once.

Three cards for one effort makes me feel like bum because I am not thinking exclusively of one person while making them. On the other hand it also make me feel like a Henry Ford type and I don't imagine Ford agonizing over the impersonal aspect of assembly line production.

If the term speeding can apply to coaxing a printer to true color with fresh cartridges for two hours then printers do indeed speed things by eliminating the need to paint backgrounds.

These wide straps ↓ are the basis of this card. Each card has two. They veritably cover the background so they are provided the same pattern. They are used to displace a segment of the central fold and double it.

See, the central fold of the card is the powerhouse for pop-up mechanisms and so often mechanisms are build directly upon it to avail its leverage directly. That puts pop-up things dead center of the card every time. A strap placed across the central fold eliminates the central fold in the area of the strap by inverting the valley of the original card to a peak of the strap while simultaneously creating two new valleys on each side of the original valley at the places where the straps attach to the card, which turns out to be vertical lines that imitate the central fold. It is these two valleys that are created by the attachment of the strap that imitate the central fold and not the peak of the strap that interests us. In a way, it is like two smaller cards within a card. It also moves content farther out toward the edges so whatever pops up must now be shorter. Each card has two straps producing four central fold displacement segments.

The straps shown below are not yet tented. At this point I do not know exactly where that crease will be, the one that inverts the central fold. What we see are the end tabs bent upward. Those tabs can be glued on the surface of the card or inserted through slots and glued to the back of the card. Either way, the line that is formed by the bent tab is the new displaced central fold. There are two for each strap. When the strap is tented, then the strap becomes the new recto leaf to the new little card, and the original card itself (with the new tab above, or below through a slot) is the verso side of the new little card. Opposite for the other side of the strap, the strap is verso page of the new little card and the original card (with tab) the new recto.

So these straps when they're tented become the verso and recto leafs of two new smaller cards that are grafted onto the original. When tented and inserted inside the main card the strap appears to be a card within a card attached with tabs and operating in the opposite direction to the original larger card, and that is correct, but we are ignoring the peak of the strap and instead we are using the connecting points (lines) of the strap and treating the strap when tented as two sides to two new smaller cards that operate in the same direction as the original card. 

*  The straps are printed with the same grass pattern as the background.  

*  The straps can be off-centered. 

*  Straps should be short to keep content built on them away from the edges. These are a bit long and so content that stands up on the straps must then be short in order to fold inside the closed card since they are so close to the edges. Some areas of the card closest to the center will not be affected much by this constriction, but most areas will. So the constructor must test with each new addition of content to make sure that it fits inside when the card is closed. 

The peaks created by the two straps in each card do not interest us presently, it is the valleys that these straps are about. You can see that at 45º the straps form two little cards that are opposite to the main card. Viewed another way, the straps also create four new valley creases where they attach and a tent atop the original valley segment. You can also see that when the card is opened flat then the straps too will lay flat directly on top of the opened card, and opening such a card fitted with two broad straps will be like opening five cards simultaneously, the main card and the four smaller cards contained therein. 

V mechanism strips are prepared for each new valley fold created by the strap attachment loci.  

These strips with grass pattern on one half and white on the other will be bent twice to form V mechanisms at each new displaced central fold created by the larger straps. The grass sticks up and the white is glued.  

Download grass pattern. 

These strips are a little more complicated than usual because the grass pattern is needed on the front and back. That is a style decision. The strips can be whipped out quickly and in great number, but because of the printed pattern these strips must be folded over for the upright portion but not for the tab portion. That doubles the density of the card stock along the strip. I would rather have not doubled the card stock for these mechanisms just to have pattern on both sides. Here is where painting would have been better (or printed on both sides). The result is that single strength straps force double strength V mechanisms that flip up content that is already diminished because the straps forced content to the edges of the card. Mechanistically, it is not a great idea. If anything, the straps should be double strength and the V mechanism single strength, but it did not work out that way this time because of the perceived need for pattern on both sides. 

The areas on the standup V mechanisms shown in blue are the places where content can be glued.  

The tabs that attach the straps onto the card background are not shown. They would complicate the diagram unnecessarily, obviously the straps must be attached somehow. You can make whatever kind of tabs you like; built into the strap as done here, separate pieces glued to both the strap and the background which I do quite often, glued directly on top of the background image, or inserted through slots and glued to the back of the page to make them disappear from the surface. In this case, the background image is grass so it doesn't make any difference at all if tabs with the same pattern are glued to the top or glued underneath.

All that up there ↑ is mechanisms and background , all this down here ↓ is content. 

As the animated GIF suggests, straps can be located anywhere across the central fold. The closer that the strap is to the viewer then the closer that the V mechanisms attached to it are to the viewer. The V mechanism fold forward toward the viewer when the card is closed and flip forward all the content that is attached to them.  The content attached to the two V mechanisms closest to the viewer risk sticking out  beyond the bottom edge of the card. The placement of the straps and their attendant V mechanisms is somewhat random in that the space for content is not actually measured, although now that the V mechanisms are in there is no reason not to measure. Different size sheep are provided for for this variation and for error. 

The content needn't be detailed on both sides, but this content is. A page of sheep content is uploaded and available for download. The page is mirrored so that pages can be matched and the content of both sides cut out at once and glued together. 

Download sheep content side A

Download sheep content side B

You just gotta see these things in action. The strap inside lifts upward to a folding tent when the card closes, which forces the V mechanisms attached to them downward and forward. Because half of the V is the original card, then content attached to that half of the V simply pushes forward and downward, but the half that is lifted upward by the strap while also being being forced forward and downward by the V it is attached to flips both forward and inward. It is marvelous to watch this paper sheep go flying upward, flipping forward, tucking inward as the card closes and while the bush right next to it simply falls forward. It's like you planned it that way or something when in fact that's just the way it turns out. In two cases, the straps were positioned too close to the front edge. Luckily, I preprinted different size sheep for that exigency. A little trim to their hoofies and they fit right in, that is, larger sheep stuck out when the card is closed. The straps having moved content from the center to the edges. 

Review:  Without straps, V mechanisms can be positioned on the center fold of a card.  The upright V provides two surfaces to attach content, as you can see, content angled toward the viewer. A short tented strap covers the central fold and provides two new valley folds closer to the edges. 

Mind the edges. 

Two flat straps displace large segments of the all-important central fold and double them. Anything that would be ordinarily placed on the central fold can now be placed next to where it would have been before the strap moved the central fold, and now there are two of them and the content placed on them must be shorter. Central fold mechanism-backbone availability is doubled but the content placed on those mechanisms will be shorter. 

It's a good way to get something off the center. 

Fitted with straps and the card  fully opened, everything is completely flat. 

Originally, a regular V mechanism is placed directly atop the central fold, the point of the V on the fold. Now the card is no longer flat. It's flat with a fence sticking up, a fence in the shape of a V with its point on the crease of the central fold. 

When the card is shut, the force applied also forces the fence to fold. The fence inside is attached to both recto and verso sides and to itself with creases at each line of contact. As the card closes the shape of the V changes, it falls in on itself, the fences inside being forced shut collapse along their creases and are forced forward or backward at a compensating angle. The bridge that was standing up 90° from a flat open card is now laying flat at 45° with its opposite right on top of it sandwiched between the recto and verso pages. All that goes for content attached to the fences. 

The idea is to attach stand up V mechanisms directly over the new displaced central folds. And now that they're doubled there are two places to attach V mechanisms with their double upright surfaces, not just one place to attach V mechanisms.  And then there are two straps, so four new displaced central fold creases, each with it's own V mechanism presenting two surfaces each, so eight new upright surfaces to attach content in a zig-zag arrangement angled toward the viewer -- are you sensing how splendid this is? -- that all stretches and extends and then abruptly flips into position when opened and then compresses like an accordion which packs the V mechanisms and everything on them tilting content toward the viewer during that moment of closing, difficult to follow as a shutter of a camera, for some of the content, a reverse flip with a twist and tuck back into position. 

You know what? I just realized this. I must make another of these and video it because describing it is goofy but seeing it open and shut with all that stuff flipping around, standing up, tucking back, is awesome. 

Alice in Wonderland pop-up card

This is a birthday card for a friend. The theme is Alice in Wonderland in the style of Tim Burton. The characters are scratchy ink sketches on one side only. The original pictures are wildly colorful and the original sketches for this card were also colored, but honestly, after four iterations in various sizes I got tired of coloring the figures so the final version is plain black and white sketches with no color fields. The characters fit within a three dimensional paper grid as chess pieces made of paper. The grid is fashioned from slats with alternating slots. Each slat is cut with slots exactly the same half way through. Half the slats are inverted so that half the slots face up and the other half face down. The slots are matched, 50% upward slot matched with an inverted 50% downward facing slot equals 100% of total slottage at the point of intersection of two slats, the point, of course, being a line. So there is the grid made of slats, the kind of slats that would protect bottles packaged together in a cardboard case. Those cardboard protective inserts always fascinated me. The way they collapse. Collapse. Open. Collapse. Open. Collapse. Open. Collapse. Open. Collapse. Open. Collapse. Open.The idea of a 12 section grid designed to protect bottles suggests a 64 section grid for a chessboard. The way they collapse and open again suggest a way that a smaller version of the elaborated grid can be inserted inside a card.

Seven strips with slots facing up cross with seven slips with slots aiming down. With the ends extended so that boxes are formed on each end, all four ends, The grid can be fitted with an outside frame. Two sides of the frame will be attached to the card, the other two sides are free, along with the entire inner grid is also free, only the two sides of the frame for the grid are attached to the card. This is what is so visually extraordinary about the action that comes from opening the card. An entire grid comes flying out of the air and plunks down upon a tiled floor and forming a perfectly square grid.

So that is the basis of the grid. The grid is attached to the card along the central fold, the two sides of the frame for the grid set at precisely 45° angle. Earlier versions used larger squares for the grid. The entire grid did not fit folded inside the closed card no matter what size paper was used. For one inch squares, a portion of the grid had to be trimmed off in order to fit the largest card stock. The bit that is trimmed off in order to force fit the content into the card actually results in an interesting changing pattern. The result is an incomplete grid that fades out from three dimensions to two dimensions to nothing as if disappearing in the background. But in this case the squares were made smaller in order to have a complete grid that fits inside the dimensions of the largest card stock reasonably available. Would you really want a gigantic card just to have a complete 8" X 8" grid inside? The rest of the content would have to be very interesting to make the grid worthwhile, after all, the grid is basically a floor. The character pieces can be lifted out of the grid. Extra characters are placed in a pocket occupying a portion of negative space in the background outside of the grid. Each character piece is fitted with a 3 slot tab on the bottom, so that even the thinnest piece straddles three grid sections and with their slots the pieces fit through the grid and fold along with it. So the character pieces can be changed. The cover is one of the characters glued to the front. There is no special envelope. The Postal Service mailer will have to do. That is how lazy I've become. *hangs head in shame* I drew the characters covering three pieces of card stock. On the third page I thought, "Okay, that's enough already," even though there are plenty more characters that could have been drawn. When it came time for the cover I was totally over drawing Alice in Wonderland characters so I used one that was already drawn.

penguin pop-up card

This is a one-page pop-up card for my brother. Penguins do not climb trees, nor do they build nests, as far as I know. Penguins do not feed their young pies, as far as I know. I think that penguins have only one chick at a time, but I could be wrong. With that in mind, then, here is a penguin feeding a pie to its multiple young in a nest that is in a tree. So this card is absurdly wrong. It's intended to amuse, not to instruct. The adult penguin is attached to a crimp that tilts a full 90º, which is a lot of tilting action for a pop-up card. I would have preferred less movement in this case, but I just dealt with it. The baby chicks are attached to a separate mechanism that pops them up from within their nest to meet the pie that is being fed to them. The cover is a simple ink sketch of a single penguin with touches of orange glued directly to the front of the card. An envelope is made to fit. I must admit this card is a bit of a cop out, but don't tell my brother or he'll think I don't love him. The fact is, I had all sorts of penguin-related ideas. The struggle for supremacy at the Southern Hemisphere, battles with other species, all kinds of ridiculous anthropomorphisms, lines of penguins holding pies forward with their flappers, a penguin pie bakery, penguin pies with fish in them, those sorts of things, but I only had the enthusiasm to crank out one page. The idea was inspired by Sophie and David Pelham's Counting Creatures, the number 13 "thrushes". It is a companion book to A is for Animals. It says right there in the book that all rights are reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form, and here I am copying their idea. Does that make me bad? I feel guilty, but I am grateful to them for showing me a new mechanism. The two books are really quite good. You should buy them, unless you're under 3 years. It says so right there in English and in French that the books are unsuitable for children under 3 years. I think that's wrong. People on Amazon say their one year old and their two year old children love these two books, and I sure can see why. I love them too. So what if they tear them up. What, do expect them to last forever? Besides, that's how people learn. They can always be glued back.

Edit: My brother told me when his wife opened this she said, "See he put two babies. That means we'll have another baby." James thought it was funny she projects clues that she wants to see. It's just two little baby penguins, "Here's a pie," it's ridiculous.  

Project indeed. Now her second boy is a few years old and has his own pop-up books.

forest pop-up card

This is a four-page pop-up card for a friend. Each of the four pages can stand alone as a separate card but here they are combined to convey an idea of a fantasy forest. * Chameleon  doing what chameleons do. * Snake uncoiling underneath forest floor debris. For the simple reason that I like this snake. follows. *main page depicting the forest. It features a tree with mushrooms underneath it that are adapted to tiny improbable cartoonish abodes. * close up of one of the mushroom houses. The door opens to show a tiny harvest mouse that fills the interior of the mushroom with its little mouse nest in contradiction to the outside appearance of the mushroom house. The card is backed with black matt board. The cover is an ink drawing of a single ordinary mushroom. A doubled black matt window frames the sketch, so four black matts altogether. All the pages, backing, and frame, are bound as a book. The card weighs just short of half a pound.

The chameleon's tongue is seen snapping at a caterpillar. A piston arm located at the bottom of the page works when the two pages are opened. The piston arm disappears through a slot on the opposite page and engages a levered arm on the back which is covered and protected. The levered arm creates an arc movement and reappears to the front of the card sliding along a slot cut in the shape of its arc. A portion of the chameleon's tongue is glued to the tip of the levered arm. The first half of the chameleon's tongue is painted directly onto the background. Only the most distant portion of the chameleon tongue travels toward the caterpillar.  Additional branches and leaves are build up on a partial table mechanism. There is actually more space to the table than there is material, but the material that forms the table with exceedingly short legs is sufficient to suggest a dense thicket of branches and leaves.

The snake is two discs attached to short arms that in turn are attached to opposing crimps made into the step of a shallow platform. The crimps -- arms -- discs work in opposite directions.   As with the chameleon, another shallow table built up of sticks and leaves obscures the snake and contributes actual depth.

The tree is built on a V mechanism. Like the chameleon page and the snake page, another shallow layer is built up to form a platform of branches and plant life, but this time the mechanism is not a proper table but rather an extension of the tree's V mechanism.  The tree trunk is a double V so doubly strong. All the 1/2" legs to the platform conform precisely to the tree's V shape. The tree trunk V mechanism drags up a dozen or so additional supporting legs that could not operate on their own without being connected to the tree. So the tree pulls with it an entire platform upon which content is attached.  That is the way to visualize it.  But the platform was built up the same way as the two previous tables were built up. The V shape is already established by the tree trunk.  Guide lines are drawn on the entire background in front of the tree extending outward that exact same V shape. The guide lines amount to a chevron design. Posts comprised of a rectangle of three scored tiny squares are glued to the background randomly but in strict conformity to the chevron pattern. Now one of the scored squares for each rectangular post  is glued flatly to the background. Precut content is glued to the second square of the 3-square rectangular post. All additional content conforms strictly to the tree trunk. The content stands upright with the tree. One square of the 3-square rectangular post remains. The last empty square of each post, now glued to the background and with erect content, are connected together to form a matrix upon which is built an airy platform of sticks and leaves, and connected also to the tree so that the platform is lifted with the tree and shoved back down when the tree is folded with the card. The platform and all the content is subservient to the tree. Because of that, it's built loosely and flimsily instead of sturdily and ruggedly. The fun thing about it is that the posts can be glued together with paper branches and  even topped with leaves before being attached to the tree trunk. Finally the entire platform having been constructed backwards in the down folded position, random legs strictly positioned, upright content, platform content, can be lifted up all together at once into position and then attached as slave to the tree trunk. It's how everything flips up at once when the card is opened.  [There are different ways to go with this. It's possible to construct a platform on a full chevron pattern comprised of sturdy squarish tubes that operate independently from the tree trunk and with content glued to their front surfaces and that provide a top surface to accept a platform, but to get all those square tubes to fold in unison either on their own or connected to the tree leads to a very paper-heavy result since the entire tube is not used to hold content upright. Using tube sections that are not connected in a complete V and so unable to operate without the tree are still paper-heavy because the entire square tube is not needed. That's because square tubes takes 5 sides as two lengths must overlap in order to form a tube. So this approach used here reduces the 5 sided square segments of a cut up tube to 3 sided partial square segments, the missing side is provided by the tree trunk itself. Clever, eh? It's also very fast and easy to build.]

The same piston arm that operates the hidden lever that moves the chameleon's tongue is used in the harvest mouse page to open the door. The door is a hinge attached directly to the piston arm. The door is a scored hinge set through a slot and glued to the piston arm so that when the card is half opened to the 90° position then so is the door. Pulling the card fully open also drags the piston and the door that is attached to it which forces the little door through the slot to a new fully opened position. When the card is closed, the piston is shoved in the opposite direction taking the door hinge behind the slot with it into a new shut position. And isn't the mouse the cutest little thing? I got tired of drawing leaves so the fern is all scribbles. Actually, all my drawings are just scribbles. Additional online pages detailing the construction of each individual pop-up page for this card.  This card was fairly easy to construct. It uses only a few pop-up mechanisms and there was nothing to figure out in terms of mechanics. All of these mechanisms were used before in other cards. * page one, chameleon page. Mechanical arm to levered arm to chameleon's tongue, with reticulated table. * page two, coiling snake. Double crimp mechanism with short connecting arms to discs, with reticulated table. * page three, fantasy forest. Tree trunk V mechanism with floating platform and upright content. * page four, mushroom house. Mechanical arm to hinged door.