Boo!
Idea
October, Halloween. In the past, I’ve done pumpkins and ghosts. This year, I searched for decorations to try and find a new idea and settled on a haunted house. In this house, mice round out the cast of characters doing the haunting. A run-down Victorian mansion is usually the typical haunted house. I looked at photos of those, and cheated a bit looking at other Halloween pop-ups (I try to avoid doing that). After settling on a basic design, I wanted to allude to a 2013 pop-up I did that was a remake of the 1960s Hallmark centerpiece (for only $1.50!), which we’ve had since I was a kid. Here’s the original packaging and my reworked pop-up that’s about ¼ the size of the original. Take note of the tree and the kids in the foreground.
Hallmark centerpiece packaging
My ¼-size pop-up
Design
The basic V-fold makes up the majority of the mechanism. The porch, first and second stories, and the tower are all separate V-folds nested behind each other. They are simple enough that I couldn’t cut them by hand, but I did end up using the computer and Silhouette Cameo to cut out most of the house. I mainly needed it for the porch, but by using the computer, I could get the slots for the tabs positioned exactly. I also could cut the roof angles precisely.
Here’s the top view of the model and you can easily see the three Vs that make up the porch, house, and tower. The fence on the front is also a V-fold with half an M-fold on the far left to turn it 90° to the center fold. The fold behind the house is an obtuse V-fold so it will tilt back, away from the house and it closes.
I made the Vs 90° on the base with the possible option of making the house completely enclosed. Sketches showed that doing so made it much more complicated to assemble and required double the artwork on the house. Unlike the Hallmark pop-up, this is one-sided. There are quite of few hinge points on the house between each V and on the roofs. To avoid folds, which add stress to the mechanism, I used tabs to connect the pieces. The decorations on the porch roof and all the dormers are tabs that connect the roofs to the house. Tabs were also used to attach the porch roof to the house, and the main part of the house to the tower. The photo below shows all the tabs.
The tab connecting the house and tower may not be necessary, but did help the tower line up right the the roof of the house.
As usual for Vs pointing down, they are slightly less than 90° (in this case 85°), to prevent them from leaning forward when the card is opened. The tilt to the roof is achieved by using a smaller angle than the house itself. The second story’s fold is at 55° to give it a good slope, but the tower is at 80° to give a slight tilt.
I assembled the entire house with the tabs before attaching it to the card. First I carefully aligned the main part of the house and glued it down. Second was the porch, which was a bit tricky since it had four rather small tabs to glue down on each side. Finally, I glued down the tower. In the photo above you can see the tower’s glue tab folded forward. That tab was cut to the exact distance between the house and tower to make alignment easier.
In my sketches, the left side of the fence was to support the tree as shown below. In that sketch, the tree caught on the top of the house as it closed, so I made the final tree smaller, but it still had a problem folding since as the card folded, the house flattened faster than the left wall, always causing the tree to catch. So the tree is now on the right side, and a ghost haunts the left side.
The sketch’s roof tabs are not disguised and are more visible.
As my homage to the 2013 card and the Hallmark pop-up, I included the tree and the running trick-or-treaters. This time they’re running away from the house instead of the tree (and they’re mice).
The base is mainly pastels, with some colored pencils for the porch flooring. There was more illustration here than many recent ones. In addition to the porch, house, tower, and roof, there’s the fence, tree, and kids (mice). And finally, there’s the V behind the house that has more mice.
Mummy mouse
Witch mice
Vampire mouse
Cover
The cover is a little hint as to what lies within. The background is black pastels with the speech balloon printed and cut out with the Silhouette Cameo. The other pieces are drawn and cut by hand.
Build
- 9” x 6”
- The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 100lb
- The other pieces are mostly cardstock from Michaels.
- Most of the house was cut by the Silhouette Cameo. Everything else was cut by hand.
- I used PrismaColor pencils for the illustrations