How I made my swingin’ pop-up invitations

Tribe member Melaina not only made these rad wedding activity books for the children, but she also made some seriously awesome pop-up wedding invitations.

We figured, not only would you want to ogle them, but you may want to attempt to make something like them yourself. So Melaina was nice enough to hook us up with a “how to.” We can't wait to see what eye-popping invites y'all come up with now! So without further ado, take it away Melaina! -Megan

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What you will need:

• Card stock paper
• Long-nosed scissors
• Nail-cutting scissors
• Pencil
• Ruler
• Double-sided tape
• Ink jet printer

First, you need to decide what you want to pop-up. In my case, I drew an illustration of my future husband and I swing dancing together, and then my future husband colored it in. But you could use any image or even a photo. I then took the image to a copy shop and had them copy the image onto card stock paper. I used card stock so that the image will be able to stand up on its own.

Next I cut around each image with a pair of long-nosed scissors.

I took advantage of the curvature of the nail-cutting scissors to help with the curved parts of the image and flipped the scissors around when the image curved in the opposite direction.

Next I printed (also onto card stock) the background for the pop-up onto the top half of the page and the text for the invite onto the bottom half of the page.

I measured the distance between the fold in the card and the background image to determine how far the pop up would be able to stick out into the card. In this case, I had 2cm.

I then folded the card shut and measured 2cm on the outside of the card and made dots in two points on either side of the card.

This enabled me to draw a line parallel to the fold.

I then made sure that the image standing up on top of the card would not stick out too far when the card was folded. I also figured out which way the image would be facing within the card.

Holding the folded card so I could see the background, I held the image along the line of the card exactly where I wanted it to appear inside the card. I then drew dots wherever I wanted the card to connect with the image.

I then cut from the fold in the card towards the line I'd drawn wherever there was a dot.

I then pushed the slots I'd created with my cuts through towards the inside of the card, so that I could slip a finger along the fold from inside the card and pull out the “stands” for the pop-up.

I then used permanent double-sided tape to adhere the cut-out image to the “stands” inside the card. I just used a very small piece of tape where the pop-up image came into contact with the “stands.” Looks cool, don't it? But the card isn't done yet!

We still have the slots, or “stands,” to hide exposed in the back! I applied double-sided tape along both sides of the card.

I adhered a larger card to the card that I'd cut the slots into. Or as an alternative, you can throw in an extra page, which is then adhered to the bottom side of the pop-out card and covers up the bottom side of the slots. This gave me three extra pages to add additional detailed information about the wedding.

And voila! You've got a pop-up wedding invitation!