December 2024 Pop-Ups

Three cards for December!

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Ideas

As usual, November is a busy time for making pop-ups: the regular December card, a birthday card, and a dozen Christmas cards.

For the December card, I looked in Shelia Sturrock’s book, which has some interesting designs. I thought I’d use her Pull-tab flower bouquet design since she mentions it can also be used for a Christmas tree. It uses a pull tab to lift seven parts to reveal the card underneath. Working with a sketch, it showed less of the base than I’d hoped. But, it gave me a new idea for the December card showing the internals of a Christmas tree run by mice.

For the birthday card, I again used Ma Wardinkle’s age. Unlike last year the mice only have a supporting role.

To celebrate Mrs. Wardinkle’s artwork for accepted for her sorority’s Christmas seal, this year’s Christmas is her design made into a pop-up.

Designs

December Card

For this card, the mechanism was a pull tab, not powered by the main fold. Since the card opens up 180°, I needed something to fill the left half of the card and Mrs. Wardinkle suggested a blueprint style. The end frame of the animation shows it but doesn’t do justice to the colors. The text and grid are light blue, like a blueprint.

For the tree, I used a pull tab to raise three flaps vertically to form the “floors” of its internals. I used a pull tab in last year’s birthday card, except the flap moved towards the pull. For this one, the three flaps move away from the pull. Within each flap, I nested a scene made up of parallelograms cut from one piece of paper to keep them as thin as possible.

The tree parts I designed on the computer and had the Silhouette Cameo cut them out. This way they matched exactly, with a 2mm overlap. I also designed the paper parts for the floors on the computer so they would be the exact size I needed to have a 1mm reveal on the green cardstock of the tree flaps.

Ideally, the flaps would lay flat, but between the thickness of the nested scenes and the tension of the other tabs, they don’t quite lay flat. I tried different things, including making the flap have a zig-zag where it passed through the base, which helped a bit.

Zig-zag tab on the flap

Even so, I think it achieves the desired effect. Each floor is cut from one piece of paper to form parallelograms in the OA (Origami Architecture) style. This avoids gluing pieces on, which would be difficult being so small, and keeps the layers thinner. I made it harder on myself by gluing on the floors after I built the tree mechanism. Here are the three floors:

The control floor has two mice talking at a desk with monitors on the wall showing the tree’s status and some graphs.

Control floor

The decor floor has a mouse pushing some balls around and another reaching for a candy cane. The supervisor is there with her clipboard keeping them in line. Behind her is a box with tinsel flowing out of it made from tin foil. (I made two mistakes on this floor. Can you spot them? ¹)

Decor floor

On the lowest level are all the mechanical components of the tree. Here we see the pumps for the water going up and sap coming down. Two workers are on a cat (mouse?) walk checking on some lights. Below are mice maintaining the pine scent and the batteries.

Mechanical floor

On the pine and batteries, I added spirals that attach them to the back wall, which definitely adds some excitement to the scene.

Spiral for power and pine scent

All the parts were cut by the Silhouette Cameo. All of the floors’ mechanisms with the mice were cut by hand.

Birthday Card

I have a small sketch of every one of the 120 mechanisms from Duncan Birmingham’s older pop-up book. I keep these and variations of them in a box and occasionally look through them for inspiration. For the birthday card, I wanted four parts of the number 84 to converge as the card was opened. I ended up using two acute V-folds with arms for each part of the number.

Sketches

The size of the numbers was determined by the mechanism that had to fit within the card when closed. I made them as large as I could, but that left quite a bit of empty space around the numbers. In sketches, I added four sets of mice on parallel folds. The ones on the top were awkward, so I did not use them.

The mice that made the cut wish Ma a happy birthday. I printed the letters and drew in the mics.

Happy Birthday from the mice.

And those sneaky mice are also under the 84 and are hidden when the card is opened.

Sneaky mice

One thing about the parallel folds was that they lifted the numbers a bit, so I added a ring around the numbers to have the tab for the parallel fold stay flat near the numbers. The white parallel fold part on the patterned background really jumped out, until I covered it, matching it as best as I could. Being on a curve above the base, it can’t be a perfect match.

Details matter

Most of the card was cut by the Silhouette Cameo, except for the mice.

Christmas Card

This card’s design was already done by Mrs. Wardinkle. I just had to adapt it to a pop-up. Her stamp design had her sorority’s letters on the mittens, so I changed that to be our initials. I tried to figure out a way to have the mittens be on different planes to be more interesting, but that didn’t work out. Instead, I went with a simple parallelogram.

Parallelogram

To start the process of creating a dozen pop-ups, I printed “Merry Christmas” on the lighter green cardstock, then had the Silhouette Cameo cut out the “2024” and the vertical cuts for the mittens, which you can barely see in the photo below. Note the pile of tiny ovals and triangles. I had to glue them inside each zero and four as I assembled each card. I completed one card to make sure the design worked, then cut out the other eleven.

Ready for assembly

Then the mittens were cut from dark green cardstock. The white shapes are paper that will go behind the mittens, and the 2024 on the base. The stocking cap on the upper left is for the cover.

After all that hard work by the Silhouette Cameo, I had plenty of leftovers. Anyone need a 2?

Leftovers

The assembly line went smoothly. It consisted of the following steps

1. Glue the white paper behind the mittens
2. Glue the white paper behind the 2024
3. Glue in the centers of the zeroes and fours
4. Fold the base, coaxing the parallelograms from the main fold
5. Glue the mittens to the base. The left mitten is raised a bit and I made a notch in the parallelogram for alignment.
6. Fold the dark green base, and glue the light green mechanism to it.
7. Glue the hat onto the cover. I created an alignment jig from the hat’s cutout.

Covers

The Christmas card (top) is a variation of a different stamp design from Mrs. Wardinkle.

The birthday card cover (lower left) is a paper from a spiral notebook decorated to look like school notes, including the doodles in the margins. I leave it to you to figure out the missing symbol. Like last month’s card, the background is lighter in the photo.

The December card cover (lower right) gives a hint as to what’s inside. I was envisioning an old-time college lecture hall.

Builds

Birthday Card

• 9” x 6”
• The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 270gsm
• The patterned paper on the inside was from Micheal’s.
• The mechanism was cut by the Silhouette Cameo from index card.
• Most of it was cut by the Silhouette Cameo, except for the mice.
• The mice were done using PrismaColor pencils and Pitt Artist Pens

December Card

• 9” x 6”
• The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 270gsm
• The tree mechanism is Michael’s cardstock.
• The floors are printer paper.
• The tree parts were cut by the Silhouette Cameo, the rest were cut by hand.
• The illustrations were done using PrismaColor pencils and Pitt Artist Pens

Christmas Card

• 4¼” x 5¼”
• All the colored paper was Michael’s cardstock.
• The white was printer paper.
• Everything was cut by the Silhouette Cameo.