Alice in Wonderland pop-up card

This is a birthday card for a friend. The theme is based on the movie by Tim Burton.

The mechanism is based on the cardboard insert to cases of wine bottles. The idea that creates 12 spaces for the wine cases is extrapolated to produce a chessboard of 64 spaces.  The problem with such an idea is the arrangement folds into a very long and thick pile of slats and the dimensions must be very large. The arrangement opens as a Japanese paper fan hinged to the inside spreads completely open then plunks down on its prepared surface of alternating red and white squares. The floor and inside walls of each grid square match colors.

The character pieces are cards with slots that span at least two squares and can be placed anywhere.

It took a few tries to get an acceptable size. These characters shown here (and more) are the third time I drew them in working out the size that I wanted. 

The original versions were not a full grid. It turned out ridiculously large and I do not want that. I notice on YouTube people make giant pop-up cards as part of their art degree. They're always huge. Portfolio size. That will not work for a regular birthday card. I had four versions of partial grids before settling on this size in order to have the entire grid. By then I was tired of coloring in the figures and this last time left them blank.

Cop out. 

La la la, I don't care anymore. Color them yourself. That's my attitude.

I included coloring pens. 

Like I planned it.   

Characters wouldn't fit on the grid so a pocket is provided for extras. I made no attempt to provide a proper chess set with eight pawns each, two rooks, bishops, knights and the rest for each player. It's just the idea of their mad court, not a real chess set. 

This turned out one of the more popular cards. I haven't mentioned this to the person who has the card because the subject never came up but this card gets viewed pretty much every day and from all over the world. 

If you like, more words and more and larger photos here.