Twisted-Crest Celtic Spiral Pop Up Card
Celtic spiral twisted-crest style pop up card for the 2017 holiday season.
Continue readingMake a 180º Open Twisted Crest OA/Kirigami Pop UP Card
I have been having fun making these 180º open twisted crest style origamic architecture pop up cards. This is a clever technique and, I wanted to invite you to join in the fun. This post includes patterns for my new Flower Crest design, suitable for production on a laser cutter, a craft CNC cutter or, by hand.
Most people will have to actually make one of these cards or watch the folding video to get how it works. I originally spotted this technique used for several patterns in Keiko Nakazawa’s 2006 book 3D Pop-Up Greeting Cards (link in the resources section below) and, abstracted it to make my own designs. Rather than gluing to backing cards, I prefer to develop other approaches like what I have done here.
Machine Settings
Settings for your cutting machine, whether CNC or laser, will vary depending on your machine, the specific paper stock you are using and other factors.
The paper I used for my cards was 0.014″ thick 105lb cover stock.
On the Glowforge, I used a speed of 500 and power of 72 for the cut lines and a power of 18 for the mountain fold lines. I scored the valley fold lines on the back by hand with a craft knife. If you are a Glowforge user, you likely have some experience dialing in settings for a particular material. I color-coded the file so that the GFUI will separate and order the operations on import.
27 July 2019 update: I’m seeing less smoke deposition with lower power and slower speed. I have switched to using 250 speed and 36 power.
My settings for each operation for the Gazelle cutter are in the MTC file as layer descriptions (D is depth setting on my adjustable blade holder, V is velocity and F is force). Those will probably be mostly useless unless you are also using a Gazelle cutter with an adjustable blade holder. If you are a craft cutter user, you are likely used to sorting out settings for a given stock. The layers are in the order you should cut them. The last two layers are the backing card (one score and the cuts).
Pattern Files
Important: These files are for personal, non-commercial use only. If you want to produce these to sell or for other business use, please contact me to arrange for licensing terms.
Flower Crest Pop Up Card PNG (for cutting by hand)
Flower Crest Backing Card PNG (for cutting by hand)
Flower Crest Pop Up Card SVG (optimized for Glowforge)
Flower Crest Pop Up Card MTC (for craft cutters)
Viking Longship Origamic Architecture Card
This Viking longship OA/kirigami pop up card was some time in the making. I’m quite happy with it, especially the dragon head.
I made four custom rubber stamps for imprinting the sails (two dragons and two spirals, one for each orientation). The metallic ink takes a long time to dry (like a month). So, I embossed them with clear embossing powder and a heat gun. The tongue is painted red. Lots of fragile bits on these. So, they required careful handling.
We All Have Our Demons
Another of the “twist” style origamic architecture pop up card. This one is inspired by Lucy Bellwood’s character from her 100 Demon Dialogues comic collection. It’s great and, you should check it out.
Laser-cut Spiral Stamp
One thing that always appealed to me about having a laser cutter in the studio is being able to create rubber stamps as needed, rather than having to send artwork out to a service. I have some “low odor” laserable rubber on-hand that I have never used. So, as a quick evening project this week, I created this little spiral stamp on the new Glowforge. I mounted it on a champagne cork using carpet tape, with a layer of plastic packing foam between the rubber and cork.
Important lessons learned here include how to size artwork for the GFUI and, that you absolutely do not want the residue from laser engraving rubber on your hands.
Abstract Origamic Architecture Experiment on the New Glowforge
This week saw the arrival of the long-anticipated Glowforge laser cutting machine at the Stud.io. I had it up and running in a couple hours, dialed in some settings for cutting some standard stock last night and, produced this quickie abstract origamic architecture / kirigami this afternoon. I am super excited to have an easy-to-use laser available!
Hart of Winter
The Hart of Winter is my 2016 holiday origamic architecture / kirigami / pop up card. The card is three pieces. The two silver pieces mount to the base with slotting tabs then, connect together via interlocking antlers. These were fun and relatively easy to build and, a big hit!
Garden Lantern Pop Up Card with Integrated Electronics
I have been making chicken tracks around integrating paper electronics with origamic architecture for several years. This is my first presentable project along that line.
I’ve had a vague idea for a garden lantern OA for quite some time. The electronics seemed like a solid match for this. The lantern itself it is a single piece of stock, cut, scored, folded and joined on two edges to make a pop up. It is mounted on two additional flat base layers that incorporate and conceal the electronics.
This uses an integrated switch and has no externally-visible electronic components, which I haven’t seen in any other paper electronics projects elsewhere yet.
The closed card is 11cm by 16cm. The lantern is 4cm square at the base and ~5cm tall when opened.
Watch the video to see the candle flicker effect and, to see it folded flat.
The “ambient nocturnal background sounds” in the video is another one of my multi-track recording experiments.
Special thanks to Natalie Freed whose paper electronics class at HSL shortened my learning curve with the paper electronics stuff. Thanks also to Jie Qi for her inspiring projects and, to the team at Circuit Stickers whose efforts made my project a lot easier.
Hammering a Helical Heart
I made an edited build video for the Helical Heart pop up cards, including an original taiko soundtrack (well, pentatonic xylophone, mokogyo, bowl gong, bells and fish rasp, anyway). This is my first YouTube video and, my first multi-track audio recording. Let me know what you think and, if you would want to see more stuff like this.
The Popup Card Shop is Live
I am not sure why I didn’t think to mention it when the new Popup Card Shop went live a couple months ago. It features pretty new photos of all of the commercial cards from Japan and, more relevant for this site, some of my designs, on sale for the fist time. You may remember the first one up from my post here last January on the Golden Spiral card (now available here). I added the quick design I did for the XOXO festival as a Valentine’s Day card in February.
I am slowly working on getting some of my older designs production-ready. So, look for more soon.
I’m also working on refining some production techniques and, on some other experiments. I’ll post more detail on those here eventually.
In the meantime, check out the Popup Card Shop and, let me know what you think!