Get Better...

My mom, who lives three thousand miles from me, was hospitalized this past weekend. She had to have surgery to install a stent just below her kidney to deal with a blockage caused by a very large kidney stone. The stone has not yet fully resolved so she is still in some discomfort, but she is being medicated and was sent home yesterday.

I wanted to make her a somewhat special card to let her know I was thinking about her. I wished I could be there to do things for her, but that just isn't possible right now, so I decided to send her some soup from here. Well, not real soup, but some virtual soup. Here, you can see what I mean...



The soup can is one of my favorite pop-up mechanisms, the cylindrical pop-up. Here is a view that shows how much it pops off the page. It really made a wonderful soup can, don't you think?



I am not going to tell you how I made the whole card, but I did think you might like to know how I made the soup can. I didn't take pictures as I made this card, and I didn't actually measure my mechanism as I made it, so I have made a second soup can to show you how I did it.

For this new can I started with a piece of card-stock 4 1/2" x 8 1/2". With it in the landscape orientation, I scored it at 3/4" and at 3 3/4". I then cut it according to the following template:



The most important parts of this template is that the little cutout parts on the left edge align perfectly with the long tabs on the right edge, and that the cutout parts go right to the score line at 3/4".

Once I had cut out my mechanism, I decorated it. I simply hand-sketched my can and colored it with COPIC markers. I used a scrap of card stock from which I punched a circle to help me make the gold medallion at the center of the can. Everything else is just free-hand.



Next, I trimmed a little wedge off the sides of the small tabs on the left of the mechanism, just to allow the mechanism to glide a little better. I put strong adhesive on the tabs (on the right side), folded on the score line, and affixed it to the right side of my card (this is a piece of cardstock, 8 1/4" x 5 1/4", scored at 4 1/8" in landscape orientation to form a card. It will be glued into a standard sized dark red card.) The mechanism piece now sat near (but not quite at) the bottom of the card, about 3/4" from the fold, with the right tabs extending past the edge of the card, but the score-line on the right of the card was about a 1/4" from the right edge.



Next, I folded back the score line on the right side so that the tabs extend under the mechanism, toward the left. I passed them through the slots formed by the gaps cut between the left tabs, and across the fold.



I pulled on the ends of the tabs until the can started to pop up. When it was rounded enough to look like a can, I made sure the tabs were even, and then with a pencil, marked on the left side of the card where the tabs extend. I marked around the whole end of the tab so I knew where I could place my adhesive.



I placed a generous amount of strong adhesive in the areas marked, peeled off the liner, and attached the ends of the tabs.




Lastly, I carefully closed the card. This allowed the mechanism to return to the flat position, and for the tabs to fold where they need to fold to allow that to happen. Once flat, I carefully went over the card's fold with a bone folder, and over the folds in the tabs from the outside of the card, just to reinforce the folds. If you look carefully at this picture of the card re-opened, you can see the folds in the tabs about a quarter of an inch to the left of the center fold of the card. Those were NOT pre-scored. The mechanism determined where they needed to lie and caused them to be formed.



Once the mechanism is complete, all that was left to do was insert it into my standard card and then decorate the front and inside left. I added a decorative panel to the inside left of the card, being careful that it didn't extend beyond the folds in my tabs, but right up to them, and then added a layer with a saying on top of that.

On the front, I prepared a panel of the same decorative paper with my little moose image (just LOVE Riley!!) layered onto a piece of white card stock whose bottom edge I had punched with a lace border punch. I added three square brads, and a black organdy bow before affixing it to my main card.

I hope you have enjoyed my little "get better" project and will give the cylinder pop-up a try sometime. I hope to be back with a little variation on this mechanism soon... but it does kind of depend on how much I can stand to sit.

Smiles,
Kathy