Pop-up section is a separate piece that has tabs and is glued on – nice and easy!
This pop-up card is a great craft for children to learn, it can be adapted to all sorts of themes. I love cards with flowers as they can be used for most occasions – and, well, when I am not crafting I love to garden!
The bits and pieces you need are lightweight card to make the basic card, and smaller bits of paper to create the pop-up and the flowers. The easy way to work out how to make the pop-up section is to make the width of the paper used a little bit smaller than the width of the card. Fold the paper in half and then fold each side in half again, all folds going the same way so you end up with a square shape. The two sides on the edges will be the tabs that are glued to the card.
Before gluing the tabs down, assemble the flowers and glue some of them to the inside of the pop-up section and some onto the card behind where the pop will go. You can just glue them all on the pop-up section. Make sure that the ones on the pop-up section stick straight up so that when the card is closed they do not get bent. A really simple way to make a flower for the cover of the card is to use layered shapes, I detail how to do this at Shapes Flower Picture.
Once I started making Mothers Day cards that children can make, I could not stop! The others I have made are listed – Mothers Day Cards
Great gift for children to make – recycles materials so nothing to buy!
A gorgeous gift that recycles materials from home – and the little fish are useful too, for holding up notes and children’s artwork on the fridge door! All you need is newspaper, some bits of card – from old cereal boxes are fine, paints, glue and those free promotional fridge magnets some businesses give away.
First make a paper pulp by soaking torn newspaper for a day, then drain the water and add some wallpaper paste. Mold the pulp onto some cardboard shapes and then once they are nice and dry, paint them! Glue magnets on to the back and then you can admire them on your fridge. It takes a few days with the soaking and drying, but lots of fun.
So much fun that I am making all sorts of papier mache things – beads, brooches, pencil holder, crown, fish wall hangings, and I still have pulp left! I ended up with a lot of pulp as I was mixing in the paste while cooking dinner and answering questions about how to spell words – so slightly distracted I neglected to drain the water before adding the paste. Never one to waste soaked newspaper I kept adding paper napkins to soak up the extra liquid – and adding, and adding, and adding. Great though, we get to have a lot more papier mache fun!And if you ever find yourself with extra papier mache left over – pop some plastic wrap over it and store it in the fridge.
Now if I can just find a spot amongst all the drying sculptures I might be able to read the newspaper – before tearing it up to make some more!!
I have now made a Papier Mache Pulp Tutorial.
For more information about Papier Mache, check out my What is Papier Mache? article.
This uses a couple of paper crafts for children, both much easier to make than they look.
I have used lots of fun paper crafts in this card. Like all my favorite crafts, this one is easy to make but still has ‘wow’ factor. It is made up of a few elements. The first thing you need a piece of card or heavyweight paper that you make the accordion pleats in. Make the pleats by first folding the card in half, and then folding it back and forth from each side, ending up with the pleats inside the card. The pleats do not need to be very big, but you can make them bigger than I have.
On my one I added a separate piece of card for the front and back, but you do not need to do this. I had to because I mucked up and used the wrong weight for the inside, it was too light weight to stand as a card, and also my flowers were poking out from the inside – whoops, but it looks great with my wee fix!
Then you just need something to attach to the pleats to pop-up when the card is opened. I had lots of little origami flowers that I had made that I needed to use – perfect! I made lots of flowers as they were also really easy and fun – if you want to make some of these check out the Origami Tulip Tutorial and Origami Stalk and Leaf Tutorial.
Something else I have done on this card that is effective and very easy to do, is to layer up a few shapes of decreasing size for putting the message on. It makes a big difference to the writing, it really frames it.
I found the idea for this card in a cool book by Sandi Genovese – Pop-Up Cards. I liked that it covers some basic concepts and shows lots of cool ways of using them. Some cards would be too tricky for kids to attempt on their own though. Templates at the back are supposed to be enlarged on a photocopier – I found them really useful as a guide for what I need to do but did not bother to copy them, that would be a pain.
A card that can be used for a gift too!
Paper crafts like this one are great for children and grown-ups. What I really really love about this card is that the little pockets can be used to contain all sorts of treats. The most special kind are vouchers promising things like a cup of tea, or dishes washed, that kind of thing. The giver and the recipient both feel good with that sort of gift. I will give this card to my children to see what they come up with – I suspect I may even find carefully drawn pictures of dragons tucked in the pockets!!
Then it is ready for filling the pockets!!
If you want to use the shape I made for the card front and back, I have made a template – card shape that you can print out. I put lots of different sizes, even little ones that you could use for gift tags.
I will update this post after Mothers Day with what ended up in the pockets!
Flowers all in a row to pass on my thanks!
This is one of the very effective paper crafts for children and an easy pop-up card technique for children to create. It combines a couple of different techniques, you do not need to use both, but I have thrown them both in the mix here to demonstrate two at once.
The first technique I used was making a paper garland (Paper Garland Tutorial). I then used pencils to give each flower it’s own personality. They are so sweet!! Other ideas for the garland are hearts or stars all in a row, or a person so that their is a row of folk holding hands.
Inside the card I made a simple pop up (Pop-up Card Tutorial) to stick on more of my flowers – I had made the garland much too long to fit on the front of the card. You will have to trust me on this, there really is a pop up on the card, it is kinda little and hard to see in the photo – but the action is that when the card is opened the three flowers ‘pop up’ and stand out from the card. To decorate the rest of the card I drew another flower – a big version of my little ones in a row.
But wait, there’s more!! Yet another flower from my garland (the last one I promise) is stuck onto the envelope to make matching set.
If you want some more ideas for these techniques then check out my other paper garland and an alternative simple pop-up card.
I did not make this up all by myself for paper crafts for children, I made my own version of one that I was given last year as I loved it and it is a great mothers day card. I thought it a really nice idea as it combines home made with a little gift of the tea-bag and the associated tea break. For my version I made a tea pot with a slit in the tea pot lid for the tea bag tab to poke through.
The poem in the tea pot reads … A cup of tea to say thank you For all the things you’ve done And wishes that the day will bring You happiness and fun.
I like the idea of providing the children a tea-pot card cut out and they decorate the tea-pot any way they like. My children would likely decorate it with dragons!
If you want a tea-pot template to trace I have one handy, it has two different sizes, coz I like options and I had room on the paper – tea pot template.
