Bour3: June 2011

Joe's tree pop-up card

Single page birthday card for a friend, based on the first page of Brava Strega Nona! by Tomie DePaola, popped up by Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart.

The birthday loomed and there I was idea-bereft, empty of any ideas building pressure for expression so I pulled a few pop-up books off the shelves and thumbed through them for inspiration.

There was nothing particularly apposite about a tree but then I thought, there doesn't need to be. Just make something cute. So I used crayons which would permit a great deal of childlike carelessness in execution. The background is my least favorite part of any card. This background very closely mimics the art in the book. So does the tree with certain modifications to make it easier. I am very lazy sometimes. Somehow the idea lodged that I would not be doing anything more than once. If I messed up, and I did, then I will just have to make adjustments and live with the mistakes. If I would do this again it would come out much better, but I don't care. I'm not trying to win any awards over here and I am not striving for perfection.

Go on, have a look at the rest of the photos that describe this card in more detail and see if you could do better yourself.

This card is also posted on another site that has listed all of the pop-up cards. At least most of the pop-up cards beginning from the time I started listing them here.

superpatriot

bunny passion pop-up card

This is a 3-page pop-up card to acknowledge a friend's birthday. This year his birthday coincides with Easter, most unfortunate in my view because that means his personal celebration is shared with something that, frankly, is more significant.

I seldom have a chance to see someone open my card because I am usually not there when they do so I have no way to gauge their reaction. But this time was different because I co-hosted a party for the person at my home. The party was rather large. Oddly, people had gathered in one of the bedrooms because that is where the cards were collected and with no small sense of drama, my friend Paul, an actor at heart, opened his cards and shared them with the room that packed with people. Knowing by now that the card from myself would be some sort of pop-up, he saved the puffy one for last.

The room said, "Ooooo. Oh my gaaaaah" all at once. I overheard one woman say to Paul, "Surely, you must know how much somebody loves you to do all this." Others marveled. At least they pretended to marvel. Obvious is the Easter Bunnies, but lost on Paul and the others in that moment, and this was intended, was the second story of the Christian passion happening on a smaller scale and in black and white in the background, purposively overshadowed by the larger and more colorful and more fully explosive bunny rabbits. Nobody noticed the card actually told two stories at once. Noticing that would come later if at all.

The three pages can be seen here.

Pages for all the pop-up cards are collected here.

snake pop-up card

This is a one-page pop-up card in the Egyptian style. I liked the way the snake coiled in one of my pop-up books. This card is for my brother's birthday. More on this card, its construction can be seen here.

Pages for alll the pop-up cards are collected here