Pop-Up Greeting Card

Does your enthusiasm to create only flat works waned, but you need to gain experience with three-dimensional creation? In this case, the following tutorial is just for you!

With Jana Svobodová from the Ateliér Radost, we'll create a so-called Pop-Up greeting card with a simple three-dimensional effect. So let's begin!

We leave the visual aspect of the greeting card up to your imagination. You know best whether you'll use it for a birthday, feast, etc. We worked with watercolors, but colored pencils, wax crayons, or ink will do the same work. Therefore, the choice of art media is entirely yours.

If you opt for painting with watercolors or aniline colors, don't forget to prepare brushes, watercolor paper, a cup of water, and, if you want to experiment, table salt as well. You'll also need scissors, a glue stick, and a fineliner. When you have everything ready, you can get down to work.

First of all, paint or draw the chosen motif on paper. Cover the entire format with small pictures. Some motifs can be smaller, and others can be bigger. If you create with watercolors, try to pour a little table salt onto the still-wet painting and remove it after the paper dries. Table salt will create an interesting, colorful effect that will make the greeting card even more original!

Now prepare watercolor or thicker paper of A4 size and fold it in the middle.

Take another sheet or A4 format, fold it, and cut it in its half so that you get A5 format paper that will be used as the inside part of the greeting card.

Then fold this A5-size paper into an accordion of 5 folds to get a total of 6 pleats. It's crucial to follow this number so that everything fits nicely. The size of the folds isn't that important.

Fold the finished accordion properly one more time.

In the next step, create a cut on the middle fold from the reverse side. Then push the cut out to the visible side.

Glue the first and last fold of the accordion to open A4-size paper with a glue stick and create a kind of stairs.

Now let's go back to the pictures you created in the first step and cut them out.

In addition to adding other pictures or finishing details with a fineliner, don't forget to fill in the appropriate text. Every greeting card must have it!

Once again, cut out the text and other additional pictures.

Think out where to place all the cut-out motifs first and then glue them.

And it's done!