Making pop-up cards

Yesterday’s HINCHAS Press zine workshop was hosted by Isabelle Lin, an illustrator and printmaker (you can check her amazing work here). Isabelle showed us how to make pop-up elements for zines.

Inspired by the workshop, I thought making cards for Mother's Day would be a good idea. I used this video by Shayda Campbell for more guidance on how to create pop-up cards and came up with my own design using flowers and typewriters, one for my Mom and one for my Mom-in-law.

With ink and watercolors, I drew Japanese cherry flowers for my Mom-in-law and Polish spring flowers for my Mom. Using watercolor pencils was a lot of fun, something I hadn't done in probably more than two decades. When the floral elements were drawing out, I glued the pop-up platforms made from index cards to the card stock paper. Then came the most time-consuming part of the process: cutting out the flower shapes. To make my life easier, I used an X-Acto knife.

Here are the completed cards. I hadn't made handmade cards for loved ones since probably elementary school, and putting together such a thoughtful gift felt wonderful. And don't worry, my Moms won’t see them, they don’t use the Internet.