Tutorial: Mini Pop-Up Cards

Hello, fellow crafters! It's my turn to host a Polka Doodles Tutorial and I'm going to show you how to make an easy peasy mini pop-up card.  So incredibly simple you'll be churning these out in no time at all. The finished project looks like this:

Cute little owl with a birthday greeting on the outside ...

.. and another cute little owl pops up on the inside!

Here's how to make this adorable project:

1.  Get an image. I'm using this cute little owl from Polka Doodles Sugar Birdies CD and it measures 1-3/4" wide and 1-7/8"up to his eyes (2-3/4" all the way to the top).  You need to measure your image because the pop-up mechanism has to be smaller than the image so that it's not visible.

2.   Prepare the card base. I'm using heavy base weight CS to make a 4"x4" card.

3.   Make the pop-up mechanism. Based on the size of my image I cut a piece of layering weight card stock measuring 1-1/4" x 5". On the long side, I scored and folded at the following marks on my ScorePal: 3/4"; 2-1/4"; 3" and  4-1/5". ( Each section measures 3/4", 1-1/2",  3/4", 1-1/2" and 1/2").  

4.   The 1/2" section at the end is the glue tab. Apply some adhesive tape here.

5.   Fold over and glue the tab to the top edge of the strip of card stock. You should have a box without sides.

6.   Apply some glue to the wide surface of the pop-up mechanism and attach it to the pop-up image. You should not be able to see the pop-up mechanism from the front of the image.

7.   Now you're ready to attach the image to the card base. If you want to decorate the inside of your card make sure you do it before you attach the pop-up image. First, apply some glue to the base section of the pop-up image and adhere to the centre inside of the base card. Then push the image flat against the base card, apply glue to the section that will be against the base card (as shown below). Close the base card down on top of the pop-up image. Let the glue dry before opening.

8.   Once the glue has dried, open the card and voila! You have a 90º equal parallel pop-up card.

It really is that simple!  Just 2 little details to bear in mind:
a)  the pop-up mechanism (the "box" behind the image) must be a little smaller than the image itself; and
b) the base card must be big enough to fit the image when it's folded down flat.

Here's another pop-up card, also using an image from the Sugar Birdies CD.

This card measures 4-1/2" x 3-1/2" ...

.. and there's that little pop-up owl. Fabulous birthday surprise!

The Sugar Birdies CD is full of cute elements that you can use to churn out quite a few of these dinky little pop-up cards. I hope you'll give it a go, it really is hoot to make! (Sorry... I couldn't help myself! LOL).

Happy crafting!

Beijinhos,