This setup gave me an idea for a pop-up with a rectangular pond surrounded by trees on two levels.
Elevated so the pond can have depth.
I want an crocodile in there that hides when the card is opened. You can only see it as the card is opening and as the card is closing. The trees merely flip up, rather, in the revised version, instead of the trees as content glued on the top layer that flip up, the trees are attached to the bottom layer positioned through a slots made in the top layer and glued standing straight up in the opened position, so, as hinges the trees are forced by the slots to all fold outward in unison and lay flatly when the card is closed, as you shall see.
It all starts with a little hill so the crocodile's head will poke up when the card is closed and lay flat when the card is opened.
Paper I-bars to elevate the second layer as a table. All the I-bars will run parallel with the central fold and perform as hinges. "V" bars are to add content to the top surface when a length of it is snipped in the center and bent into another V shape, one half glued to the surface the other half sticking up available to have trees glued to it. This turned out too messy and the idea abandoned.
For waves that close shut over the crocodile when the card is opened.
The trees will be glued to the upright "V" mechanisms arranged in chevron.
Alternately, with slots in the top layer and trees glued to the bottom instead, the trees will all be flat and parallel with the central fold. That's fine for the trees on the sides but less fine for the trees on the top and on the bottom of the pond. Their trunks will be flat and parallel with the central fold too unless I design another attachment that flips the tree branches 90°.
At this point it is too big a mess. It must be the slot method. Even if the trees on the top and the bottom face the wrong way like good little soldiers.
With tree trunks through slots, all the tree trunks will open flat and parallel with the central fold. I do not want that for half of the trees, top and bottom. Perhaps there is something they can do differently from the other trees that puts the plane of their flatness at 90° to their trunks. Maybe the whole row at once. Maybe the whole orchard at once.
This shows what an unsightly mess it's become and the trees are not even glued on yet.
This shows it can shut.
So, it's all there and ready to go and I completely lost interest. I do not care about Amenemheb's garden anymore.
The trees must be shortened the closer you get to the edges, left and right, or else they will stick out of the card when it is closed. I just now noticed the servant figures in margins tending the orchards and that design element really does help a lot. The figures are on a larger scale than the trees, each figure is three trees tall, and that helps greatly should I ever pick this up again.
I just lost interest immediately after that last transfusion, as if my new blood just flat isn't interested in any of this. And I have to respect that.
And I wonder sometimes how did I manage through all that to maintain any semblance of self whatsoever, and I still do not know. At the same time I am still thinking about what could make good pop-ups with no impulse to execute the ideas. None whatsoever. But if I did execute it then I might do twenty-five or so all at once, send them all out Fed Ex en mass each with a note, "This is all you're having this year." The same thing as everyone else. Just to get cards out of my system.
Heck. I made three of the same idea at once before and sent them out dispersed to three women important to me and nobody complained about not being unique.
