Love at first sight
Idea
On September 25, 2018, I received an email from Ma Wardinkle with the title “Tada! - Look what I found!” and it was an old photo-booth picture of Pa Wardinkle as a young lad and his very best friend J.J. I’d guess the photo was taken around 1950. It’s been sitting in my inbox for several years now, and I’ve always thought, “Someday I’ll use that in a pop-up.”
February is Pa Wardinkle’s birthday and passing month, and every year I’ve tried to come up with an idea with no success. I thought about creating a photo booth pop-up, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. When visiting Ma this past Christmas, she told a story we’ve all heard many times of how Ma and Pa met. Pa was driving down the street in a bedframe go-kart. Ma was with a friend and asked who that boy was. Her friend made introductions, and the rest is, as they say, history.
I don’t know if they were in a malt shop or not, but I took the liberty. The prominently featured YMCA is from a story Pa would tell (every time we drove by it) about him and J.J. swimming there, naked.
Design
A sharp eye will notice there are mice in the pop-up. I do not have mice for parents. I figured out the design and did a sketch with humans, but with my skill level, they were a bit less than human. I thought of using mice-like bodies and photos for heads but then decided to just use mice. (They are so helpful!)
To make this scene, I wanted to use the Origami Architecture technique I’ve used before. This is when I cut the entire mechanism from one piece of card with nothing glued on. It’s a sort of puzzle to figure out how to make all the levels work from one piece. This one isn’t too complicated. The Y is one level, and the bedframe and the driver are two different levels from the Y.
The street post is just one.
The malt shop is two levels, but has a new twist. Usually, each level is in front of the previous one, like stairs. For the malt shop, Ma and her friend go backward, into the malt shop – still out of one piece of card. The size of that part is restricted to the size of the malt shop’s window from which they are cut. I had to have enough area for the two figures and a tab to attach to the base. Using the tab probably breaks some Origami Architecture rule, but it was fun to figure it out.
Figures go backward into the malt shop
I used a brush pen to make the edges of the Y and malt shop black to help pull them off the background as you can see on the left of the soda fountain.
Since I would be doing quite of bit of illustrating on the mechanism before it was folded, I created it on the computer and had the Silhouette Cameo cut it out. That way I could make sure it was correct before illustrating. The first cut needed a few adjustments and I was confident to use the second cut. Below is a photo of it with some corrections and notes.
Sketch showing the areas of the base that need coloring
Since it’s cut out of one piece, the parts that go forward leave gaps where the base will show through as you can see in the photo above. I colored the base to match the illustrations on the mechanism.
Coloring the base to match the openings
The photo above is the base, which has the cover on the reverse of the top half. On the left is the pool under the YMCA, where Pa, J.J., and their friends cavort in the pool, sans suits. The side walk and black areas are under the go-kart. The center is the area left by the street post, which is just more grass. The right side is the area under the malt shop. I printed the checkerboard floor, added the soda fountain, a couple more patrons, and a soda jerk.
Coloring the base hid the edges of the mechanism pretty well. The left photo below is lit from a low angle and you can see the cuts of the mechanism on the base. The second photo has the light at a higher angle. I could have trimmed the mechanism to avoid some of the edges, but didn’t want to alter the mechanism.
Coloring the base almost hides the cuts
It was tricky gluing the figures to the base in the malt shop. I had to do it after the rest of the mechanism glued to the base. I used tweezers and a thin piece of plastic to apply glue to the tab under the figures. In hindsight, I should have made the flap for the figure so behind. Instead, it went forward, so I had to put a piece of checkerboard to cover that up.
Details, details, details
For the bricks on the Y, I used a scoring tool to deboss the mortar, then used colored pencils for the bricks. I also did some random debossing on the roofs and the road for texture.
Debossing mortar
In my full-size sketch, I didn’t attach an outer cover and it opened and closed fine. In the final version with the attached cover, Ma caught on the top fold of the malt shop as indicated below. I feared it may bend the paper, so I put a piece of paper over the edge.
Catching on the base
But it still caught, so I needed to use cardstock to make it thicker. It just happened to work out that the light’s conduit lined up with the figure, so I added a thin piece of card over that. Below you can see the paper over the fold, which didn’t work, and a piece of card ready to cut for the conduit.
Two tries to fix it
How many times have I harped on making sure when you fold the card nothing sticks out? When I cut out the mechanism, I did so on 8½“x11” paper and the sketch worked fine. In the final version when I cut it down to 4½“x6” (folded), I noticed a bit more resistance in one area and thought “Uh oh, I just cut something I shouldn’t have. When I opened it up, I saw that the go-kart was a bit too close to the forward edge and I cut off Pa’s ear.
Will I ever learn?!
To fix it I added a new head of paper, slightly lower. Notice that the exhaust is somewhat pink and heart-shaped to mimic the hearts over Ma’s head. Another little detail is that I cut the tops of the letters on the two signs after drawing them in.
(And yes, the sketch photo shows the missing ear, but since I used a paper cutter instead of a knife and didn’t illustrate it, I didn’t notice the loss of the ear.)
Cover
The cover and text on the inside were printed on Bristol paper using the plain paper settings on my Canon printer.
Build
- 9” x 6”
- The base was Strathmore 300 Bristol 270gsm
- The mechanism was index paper, cut with the Silhouette Cameo.
- The illustration was done with Pitt Artist Pens and PrismaColor pencils
- The red border on the inside was pastel.