I love vintage greeting cards. For some reason I think they are particularly charming for the Valentine’s season. Vintage Pop-Up Cards: Making Your Own Timeless Treasures by Taylor Hagerty gives color reproducible patterns and instructions for making your own vintage looking cards.
The book begins with an interesting history of pop-up cards. I had never considered how origami influenced pop-up books and greeting cards. Movable picture books have been around since 1860.
In Vintage Pop-Up Cards, full patterns and instructions are provided for twenty-four Victorian looking cards. The images copy nicely. Instructions for reproducing the images, aging your paper, cutting out the images, and assembling the cards are included along with color pictures. Pop-up terms like diamond cut, volvelle (a rotating paper disc), and diorama are explained.
And then comes the fun part, the embellishments. The reader is encouraged to embellish their cards with acrylic paint, beads, brads, buttons, charms, fabric, ribbon, glitter, paper, doilies, rhinestones and even silk flowers. Techniques for adhering rhinestones and sequins, applying glitter, beading, chalking, and creating paper pompoms are also covered.
Each individual project lists adhesives needed, different papers and embellishments, and tools like craft knives, and cutting mats. Some projects also come with ideas for altering the theme. It’s not hard to turn the graduation card into a birthday or wedding card. Others encourage the reader to add a drop of rose or lavender essential oil to heighten the senses, or to embellish the cards with reduced images of other pop-up cards.
The designs in this book are quite charming. One drawback to the book is that much like the Victorian times, people of color are not represented. There are however enough doves, vases of forget-me-nots, boughs and wreaths of flowers, hearts, harps, windmills, violets and rose to be more than worthwhile.
Vintage Pop-Up Cards could be used by beginner crafters, but experienced ones will also find lots of inspiration here. Scrapbookers and altered art fans will also want to take a look.
Also See:
Scrapbooking in the Valentine’s Day Aisle
Altered Art: Embellishing Your Altered Art