There’s a hole in the road, again
Idea
This one is pretty obvious if you read my blog about building a board book. In this pop-up, I did my own version of filling the hole, this time with mice (what else?). And with the mice, nothing is ever straightforward. In this case, the three little kittens (from my favorite series of pop-ups) have a return engagement to attempt to wrangle the mice into the hole with moderate success.
Design
I knew this would be a busy pop-up, with different mechanisms to render all the activity that I wanted to capture on the card. For the “page” from the book, I use a floating plane with a hole cut out. I printed my rogue stanza (apologies to the author) on cardstock and used the Silhouette Cameo’s Print and Cut feature to cut the hole as well as all the supports. I could have cut the supports out by hand, but by using the machine all eight of them are exactly the same size.
The floating plane gives me a new main fold. I treated the it like its own card, attaching all the kittens and most of the mice before attaching it to the main card. The plane has three triangular supports on the center fold, and four on the outside. By using a triangular center support instead of a single, vertical one I get a stronger, less floppy floating plane.
From my sketches, I wanted to have a bag or box of mice. A week or so before starting on this card, I purchased The Complexities of Pop-Up by Diaz and Carter. In that book they have a mechanism called the “Off Center Stuffed Box,” which was perfect for this card. Most box mechanisms are on the main fold, but this box is off to one side and uses a strap to pull the box up as the card opens. I created a few prototypes of it to figure out how to use it, then designed a pattern I could cut on on the Silhouette Cameo.
I kind of kicked myself for making the picture of the box on the cover so detailed, since now I had to make a tiny version of it. “Maybe the logo can be on the back where you can’t see it?” “But, it’ll look better to have it up front.” After the inner dialog, I decorated the small box as it is on the cover and used a punch to poke holes in the top (mice need air). In addition, there are some slots in the box for mice to peek out of. On the back of the box is the only kitten who managed to keep both of its mittens.
I made the strap that lifts the box line up with a line of the text so it would be a bit less obvious, but you definitely can see it. The photo below shows the box folding up. The green line is the strap. The short sides of the box are glued to the base and the red lines show how it folds flat.
The kittens were cut on the Silhouette Cameo using the same patterns for The Three Little Kittens pop-up cards I made in 2018. They even are the same size. And as before Mrs. Wardinkle colored the calico and tabby kittens.
The black kitten and some mice are on an asymmetrical v-fold on the plane’s main fold. Being asymmetrical allowed me to have it angle back on the left side, but go nearly at 90° on the right to avoid running into the box. The gray kitten, whose missing mitten is a bit more difficult to find, is attached to the asymmetrical fold with a slotted support.
The three mechanisms in and around the hole are our old friends the acute and right-angle v-folds. For the ones on the edge of the hole, they extend down under the plane. The fold on the base has the center mouse’s head attached separately to go across the center line as an added detail.
The final mechanism is a moving arm that reveals a mouse coming out from under the right side of the plane. This is controlled by an L-shaped arm with the mouse on the end attached to a V-fold on a support. As the plane raises up, the V opens, rotating the arm.
And if you didn’t find the red mitten, a mouse under the center of the plane has it.
Cover
The idea for the cover came from thinking about how the kittens would get the mice. Where else but from Amazon? The illustration was done using pens and colored pencils. (Looks like I forgot about taping the bottom. No wonder they escaped.)
Build
- 9” x 6”
- The base is made of Strathmore 300 Bristol 270gsm
- Chalk pastel for the color on the base.
- PrismaColor colored pencils and and Pitt Artist Pens for illustrations.
- The mechanisms are made from 199gsm index paper, which is a light cardstock.