Happy Thanksgiving!
Idea
In the legend of Thanksgivings past, Pa Wardinkle would grill the turkey on his trusty Weber grill. The grill was just the common big black grill that was just a sphere cut in half. Usually, he did a good job of cooking the turkey, but one year he let it go a bit too long and the legs got completely burnt. To honor Pa Wardinkle, I decided to make a pop-up of his grill and the dark turkey legs.
Update: After talking to Mom Wardinkle after she received the card, she said that the entire turkey was black. The legs were inedible, but the rest of the turkey was fine after removing the black skin.
Design
I thought this was going to be easy. I’d use a basic curve-shape mechanism for the main part of the turkey and then use the folds on either side to repeat the curve-shape for the legs. The main part worked fine making a good semblance of a turkey. The legs were a different matter.
The problem with the legs was that the fold on the side of the turkey 1) isn’t 180° and 2) isn’t really a fold. From the top view below you can see that to get the curved shape the main part is only attached to the base by a small tab (in red) on the left and right sides. Then the mechanism curves to a point at the front and back of the card. The leg will need to attach to the curved (green) part of the turkey, which moves upwards as the card is closed.
Top view
I tried several different options, some better than others. Finally, after using some very thin paper in some sketches, I found the trick was that the fold on the legs needed to be about 10° instead of parallel to the main fold. This worked pretty well and I used it in the final card, but the mechanism could still use some refinement.
Practice, practice, practice
In this view, you can see that the bottom of the leg is trying to pull up slightly. Also on the side against the turkey, I could have made the glue tab a bit more robust. Lessons learned. The wings are cardstock glued to the base of turkey. I embossed them a bit to give them some depth.
Side view
For the base, I debossed the lines in the deck and the grill itself so those lines would remain white, then used colored pencils to do the illustrating. I thought this would be an easy mechanism, but it turned out to be quite a bit more difficult with the legs. I’m pretty happy with the final result but will have to refine the mechanism if I am to use it again.
Cover
The background is black pastels with the speech balloon printed and cut out with the Silhouette Cameo. This time it didn’t cut in the middle of the outline as well as it usually did. Even on two tries. The grill is awkwardly drawn directly over the pastels with colored pencils.
Build
- 9” x 6”
- The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 100lb
- The other pieces are mostly cardstock from Michaels.
- Everything was cut by hand.
- I used PrismaColor pencils for the illustrations