Sunday, August 03, 2008

Gift idea: pop-up colouring card for kids

pop_up_colouring_card_printed_front_decorated pop_up_colouring_card_printed_inside_decoration

(This post assumes you're familiar with my more detailed instructions of how to make Horizontal Fold Pop-up cards.)

Recently, Ask Moxie had a post titled "Q&A: Does 'no gifts' really mean no gifts?" Should you feel uncomfortable going completely empty-handed, making a personalized colouring card like this (optionally including a selection of appropriately themed stickers) is a nice compromise.

Materials:
  • 2 sheets of 8.5" x 11" cardstock or construction paper
  • X-Acto type knife
  • glue (stick-glue or white glue or rubber-cement)
  • template with measurements (PDF file*) or template without measurements (PDF file*) (use this legend to decipher the folding symbols)
  • optional: a selection of stickers to include in the card for the child to use

Instructions:
  • create the front cover of the card (text on the lower half of the letter sized cardstock)
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_front

  • create the inside of the card (text on the upper half of the letter sized cardstock, offset to allow for the pop-up mechanism)
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_inside

  • create the decoration for the pop-up portion of the card (in this case, the recipient is turning four)
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_decoration

  • print off a copy of the inner template
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_template

  • I transferred the template onto the inside of the card using the pinpoint method
  • trim the pop-up decoration to size
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_decoration_trimmed

  • create the pop-up portion following steps three and four from making Horizontal Fold Pop-up cards
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_inside_template

  • glue the decoration onto the pop-up portion of the inside of the card
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_inside_decorationb

  • if desired, add additional designs to be coloured on the front of the card
    pop_up_colouring_card_printed_front_decorated

  • glue the inside of the card into the outside of the card
  • optional: include a selection of stickers for the child to use to decorate the card
Write your message to the birthday child and deliver!

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(*) When printing out PDF documents, be sure to set "Page Scaling" to "none" (you'll want the document to print at 100%). You may need to adjust the template on your paper depending on your printer's "offset" settings.