snail town pop-up cards

Three of these cards were constructed at one time for three women important to me whose birthdays converge in September. Frankly, the card is a cop out in two ways. First, I am not thinking of each woman individually and infusing the card with individual love as usual, if that makes sense to you. Secondly, the original idea that I was working on before I ran out of time was a war between slugs and snails with salt-related weaponry. I already had several pages worked out; a salt trebuchet, slugs torturing a snail, I had variations of peaceful snail and slug settlements with indications of animosity toward the other species indicating some kind of feud in progress, snails with a ramrod attacking a slug castle, a jousting session, weapons having to do with salt traps, beer traps, slug poison and such things as gardeners use, weapons involving salt and salt shakers. But time bore down upon me and in urgency I realized the women don't care what I am thinking, they don't care about what I am planning, they respond to the thing at hand and it does not matter to any of tthem if I infuse it with personal energy or not. They're not psychics. They won't sense that. So I made all three at once and they loved it. I rarely get direct feedback especially in writing, but my sister did write to tell me she adored the card and took it to her church. Passed it around. She noted the different reactions between the adults and the children. She told me the kids opened and closed the card some fifty times so that she feared it would fall apart. That cheers. me. It does. My brother told me that he and his wife took her card along with previous cards to her birthday dinner with friends and they marveled. The cards became the center of attention. And that well pleases me too.

I drew dozens of these snails for the insides of three cards. I poured Elmer's glue on my finger, drew a backward S for snail slime to shine. This is the cover. Messy, as snails are.

Content flips up as it opens revealing construction. The arrangement is a series of V mechanisms as incomplete chevrons, unattached at the point, and in chunks, completeness is not needed because they are all attached to the tree base. The tree lifts up and drags all the rest with it. It's a fake out. It looks like separate pieces working, but it is not. It is a single piece, that is, several pieces glued together as one single piece.

Construction begins with square tubes. All content is connected to these tubes arranged on the opened card surface in a chevron design, but incomplete chevrons, chopped up,  not touching at the point as required to work independently. This leaves a low area in the center of the opened card that could be a pond.

Content will stand upright glued to the front or the back of vertical face of the square tubes. The tubes will be concealed underneath leaf litter. The tubes will be attached to each other and to the tree base with random leaves. I can use twigs, branches, leaf litter, mushrooms, junk, weeds, ferns, whatever is found on a forest floor.

I have no idea how many square tubes will be needed for three cards. So I just make them. Maybe I'll run short, maybe I'll have too many. I am running out of time so just make them.

Three tree bases. These are the work horses. These are double V mechanisms standing up tall as will fit inside a closed card. They must pull up all the rest of the content. These tree bases drag up and force closed all of the square tubes, and all of the content attached to the tubes, the new raised floor on top of the tubes, and the vertical content attached to the vertical face of the tubes.

The tubes at the base of the tree give the clue to the whole design. If the tubes are chopped up and glued into place as if they are not chopped up then the whole thing will work more smoothly, there will be less force involved lifting up and folding flatly. Usually V mechanisms would connect at their points so both sides rely on each other for each V to work independently, but here they depend on the tree instead. And the tree itself is incomplete. Only the base of the tree is shown. Much like a Star Wars Ewok scene. The photography concerns itself with the base of the trees, the camera does not show the tree tops.  I make no effort to show a whole tree. Just that base of tree. That is all that is needed to convey a forest floor. It is theatrical. I do not need the whole tree.

And neither are the chevrons complete. Partial chevrons will do. All that is required is the square tube chunks run parallel with each other, and parallel with the tree base. Spacing is irrelevant. Once attached on their top surfaces it will work as a single unit, flip up and fold flat as a single piece.

Upright pieces glued to the vertical tube faces. I used the back side instead of the front side, either the front or the back of the square tube will work. Snails, signs  and mushrooms will be glued to these uprights. Obviously the uprights can be part of the pieces themselves, but I"m planning as I go, not making a book for production in another country using minimal paper and minimal pieces. I need to count how many pieces to draw and hasten this project along.

Cross pieces attach everything together and connect all the square tubes to the tree without interfering with upright pieces. These cross pieces are not required. The content itself will do this same job. I am using them to make things easier for myself. This forms a grid that leaves will be glued upon, a raised forest floor of leaf litter.

Enough leaves for all three cards.

Three cards in progress, their forms taking shape.

The reaction of these three cards was wonderful. That showed me I needn't be so elaborate with a six-page card depicting a war between snails and slugs although that would be fun and I'm still thinking about that. A simple one-page pop-up of peaceful snail settlement works just fine. This taught me to get over myself and just do it.

Official page for this pop-up card with large photos.

More on the construction process here.