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Pop Up from Vintage French Cutouts

french castle pop up card
I love the vintage French graphics at Agence Eureka. Well, except for the (stereotypical at best, blatantly racist at worst) multicultural ones.
As I was looking at the pages and pages of little scenes to cut out and assemble, it struck me that they would make wonderful pop up cards with only a little modification.
To find the cutouts at Agence Eureka, scroll down to the links on the right hand side under "cat. découpages."
I chose this one (scroll down to 07 juin, 2007) to try out.

I briefly (ohhh...sooooo....verrrrrry...briefly) considered this method. And then I decided to just use tabs and boxes: tabs on the bottom of each scene, and simple boxes (mouse over PopBlock at PopEze see an example) on the back of each scene.
The boxes create spaces between the layers and attach them together. As the card opens each layer is pulled up by the one behind it.
Modifying the graphics
For the card background I modified the sky and grass piece to make the grass the same size as the sky. I erased black marks and tab placement letters. I reduced the picture size by 50% to fit my card stock.

The pop up layers (castle, village, boat) were trimmed on the sides to remove the tabs.
I marked off a 1/2" tab across the bottom each piece and added "legs" that fold up into 1/2" square boxes on the back of each piece.

Pieces were all reduced by 50%.
Oh yeah, just for fun I stuck my Dad's head on the little rowing guy.

Tabs and boxes
You can download my modified graphic here (you'll have to add your own Dad).
Cut out the castle, village and boat scenes. Cut out the sky/grass piece and fold in half.
Score the tabs and the boxes on all the legs. Pre-crease each fold line on the legs.
To make the boxes, first fold the tabs toward the back of each scene. The legs will be pointing straight back. Fold each leg up at the first crease, then forward at the next crease, then down at the last crease. Each leg makes a little box with the loose end resting on the back of the card. Unroll the leg, apply glue to only the last square of the box (shown in purple on the illustration) and affix it to the back of the scenery piece.


Putting the pieces together
Measuring down from the center fold of the sky/grass piece, draw a guideline on the grass a tiny bit more than 1/2" down from the fold.
Spread glue on the bottom tab and back of each box of the castle piece. Line up bottom of castle scene with guideline, and boxes with center fold of the sky/grass piece. Flatten, weigh down with a book, and allow to dry.


Measure down from the bottom of the castle piece a little more than 1/2". Draw guideline and glue the village piece to the grass and castle piece. Let dry.

Glue boat piece to village piece in a similar manner.

When the card is completely dry, gently persuade it to close, pushing the scenery pieces forward.

french castle pop up card