Pop-Up and 3-D Cards and Boxes

We love doing cards with lots of dimension and cards with pop-up designs inside that add a surprise when they’re opened.

Made with Xara

Cards with extra dimension need a larger envelope, so Ray has designed an envelope with extra depth to accommodate the flowers or raised designs on the cards. The envelope is about ¼ inch in depth and is good for presentation only. These cards do not withstand being sent in the mail.

These are some of our lattice design cards. The lattice is cut out of the front of the card and the flowers and decorations are added afterwards. All of the roses are hand crafted. The leaves and greenery are die cut. The additional flowers, butterflies and jewels are bought from craft stores and applied with their own adhesive backs.

We call these our tea time pop-up cards. On the outside they can look like a pretty simple general card, but once they’re opened, the teapot and teacup, complete with steam coming from the teacup, pop up to make the inside dimensional. These do fold down flat, so they can be sent in the mail. I like to add a specialty flavored teabag inside as a bonus to the person receiving it. As you can see, we have made a variety of colors and patterns for the cups and teapots.

We wanted to find a way to display some seashells we have collected on beaches here in Florida. We decided that it would be fun to make a card that could actually be mailed, if we want to, that showed someone what we have found. So this card was born. We haven’t mailed them, because they are very time consuming, but it was a fun experiment. As you can see from the one picture on the right of the first row, the depth of the card to accommodate the depth of the shell is about ¼ inch. It is lined with foam board and then covered with decorative paper.

Pop-up houses and castles are some of our very favorite pop-up designs. They require a lot of folding and sometimes some “engineering” to work out how they will look when they’re done, but it is worth the effort. We always love the final outcomes. In the photos on the top row, you can actually see a picket fence next to the houses, and with the castle in the middle row, you see the castles has a drawbridge.

These boxes actually fold down flat and can be mailed in an oversized envelope as a card. When they are opened they can sit up as a 3-dimensional box. You can add lost of extra touches to make them personal for whoever is receiving them. We have used them as graduation cards for two of our grand nieces.