Pop-Up Notes - Part 1

1. 1. Welcome: hi and welcome to pump up notes. Part one I am Nina towards you and I will be teaching this class. I have been interested in pop ups and incorporating them into my personal notes for quite some time now, I grew a little frustrated from not having enough space to write what I wanted to write in a card. And also I wanted to make something that was coming from me and not from some company that tried to guess what my thoughts were on such a personal message for family inference about this class. I'm also going to be sharing a lot of tips on how to save time, how to maximize space and how to distribute your notes and creates a really cool layouts for making the most off your of your pop of notes. Whether you use one page or several pages, it's really up to you. I will also offer a list of materials that I tend to use when I'm creating my notes. It's completely up to you whether you use the same materials or similar materials. Some of them are basic, and some of them are just something that you can add to your list for your final project. In this class, I ask you to post a picture or pictures off your pop of notes, whether it's a work in progress, whether it's a final or whether it just changes along the way. If you're looking for some inspiration beyond this glass, I've also added a handout with some really interesting links for my personal favorites, and you can just download them and use them with directions. Also for the final project, I welcome you to post your project as often as possible. Don't be limited to just one project. Use this form this very collaborative community that we have here. It's skill share to your benefit, and all of us will jump in and comment and learn so much from one another. Let's get started. 2. 2. Materials: If you would like to start with some literature, I would like to recommend to two books that I go to very, very often. The 1st 1 is actually this book that was written by Duncan Birmingham A. It's called pop up design and paper mechanics. How to make folding paper structure. He is very visual. The book is very colorful. It has very easy to follow techniques. He uses a lot of diagrams. Now, for those of you will prefer that approach. This is a great book. It doesn't work so well for me because some of these lines they get a little confusing to me. But I know quite a few people who use this as sort of like a go to book. Oh, are you know, ah, main guideline, but it's very colorful. It does have real pictures. Um, and it has sort of, uh, 123 steps to guide the process, and he's very thorough. And this is the latest edition. So it actually has even some added techniques. So if you if you would like to, um, go with this book, I highly recommend it. Another book I would like to recommend is a I haven't any book format, but of course, it does have it in as a hard copy was written by Paul Jackson. It's called Cut in full techniques for pop up Designs. Both books are listed in the handout that you can find in the In the resource area in this course, and the reason I like this book so much is because it is also it's it's very, very visual. But all of the examples that Paul Jackson shows follow a very clear sort of template ties approach to the cuts and folds and and he uses a lot more riel photography than Duncan Birmingham Birmingham Even though Duncan Birmingham uses quite a few as well, this is all in black and white, for those of you who actually need more color than you will be better off with the other one. But I I thought I would just at least offer you, uh, the ones that I use the most. I I do come to this one way more often than the other one, but it's this is just really a matter of preference. I highly recommend both of them before we actually start folding paper. I would like to just quickly talk about some of the materials that I use in my daily making of pop ups. So let me start with the paper. The paper that I use is actually just card stocks thicker than your then your copy paper, and it comes in different thicknesses, and it's measured by Grams and others use just depending on the manufacturer. They use different card stock rankings and numbers, and they have their own way of telling you that it's card stock. But you know, mainly it's it's the thicker kind. If you actually see on the label saying card stock or something that has some kind of a weight on it, anything above 110 2100 and 50 preferably would be great for this type of thing. And I, of course, I you can see that I have a what's called a healing Matt is sort of like it's ah, it's a plastic is a very thick and poorest plastic that's very helpful when you decide to to start actually using a cutting knife and making some cuts to the paper. So while you're cutting the paper, you will notice that Let's imagine, I want to make some kind of, ah, random shape here, parallelogram and I take the shape out. And it does not. If you if I run my finger over here, it does not look like it actually got a cut or anything like that. It just self goes back into space again. And I don't have to scrape, you know, ah, tray or my table or anything that's underneath it. So why not keep the the cutting knife here? Any cutting knife would do. I have a preference for this one. It's called pen blade and you actually bite as a set, and then you recycle it in full and you don't have to keep changing the blades. But if you're more comfortable with the ones that you actually can change the blades, it's it's also fine. What I do like about this one is that I can just go down. Teoh activated, and then when I'm done, I can just quickly just retract the blade, and it's safe to store and to pick up again without running the risk of hurting myself and the blade. You will notice that if you need the blade and you need to make some straight lines. Sometimes you will be better off with a metal ruler, and I tend to use for folding the papers. I tend to use this folding bone, and I use a mechanical pencil to make some sketches and notes or lines and a plastic eraser because it doesn't hurt them. The paper and it doesn't leave marks either, and I will show you later. But I do use posted notes quite quite often when I'm walking up some things and I don't want to quite commit to, ah, final design yet. Uh, posted notes are very, very handy that way, and you will also notice that you will want to glue some things on the paper. And as we progress from part one to Part three, we will need the glue more and more often. So for quick mock ups. And and you know something that I just want to sort of have a feel for what it looks like. I tend to use this this brand in the stick format. I tend to use its sister or brother way more often, not only because it's more reliable. It does fasten the paper. It does help the paper adhere to the other paper more strongly, but it also lasts a while. I have never seen anything that I've used. This glue, um, come apart. Whereas with this one here, just give it some time, and it will not really be there forever. Great, great tip if you're, uh, really leaning towards using the liquid glue is to use a cup or something for this to stand on. And when you finish using, you can always just leave the glue over there. Sometimes you will be in the middle of a job, and you really need to pay attention to where the paper is going. It dries very quickly, but you do have, say, 3 to 4 seconds to adjust your project. But you don't have time really to tend to the cap. So what I do is I Before I use it, I just leave the cap loose enough. And then I put it back on just there just to keep it from drying. But let's imagine that you run out of time and it does dry. A great tip to to use is this one here? This used to be a paper clip, and then I just fold one of its legs out this way, and I just stick it in here to unclog it. And then once it's unclogged perfect, it leaves out, you know, some hairs, Um, and then I can just put the cap back on. Problem solved. You don't lose the glue. And last but not least, scissors. What I do tend to do with with scissors is actually I use color tape to mark my scissors and to create some sort of like pre measured distances that I tend to use more often. You really don't have to, but you will notice that some of the cuts that you're gonna make they really need to match the sides or or even just, you know, the amount of cut that your applying to the paper. But other than that, you're good to go. 3. 3. Single Cut & Double Cut: Okay, In part one, you're going to be working mainly with two different kinds of cuts with single cut and a double cut. So let me just show you what I mean by that. So before you even start, I would like to tell you that any time you work with a pop up or or paper folding, you're gonna end up with two different types of fold a valley fold or a mountain fold. So when I first start, I match the corners. This way, I hug them like that just around the paper, just to hold it in place, and I loosely crease the paper like that. Some people like to go ahead and increase the paper like this, and then re crease it, Increase it again. I tend to just hug it. Hold, make it a loose kind of fold over here, I hold it in place and I come with my folding bone and increase it the first time. You will notice that when you open the paper is not quite wanting to go where you want it to go or to make it flexible enough to work with. So you re crease it, and you crease it one more time there. Now it's much better. You can actually work with it. So for every time you're going to make a cut or fold, you're gonna end up with what we call a Valley full, something that comes ahead. There's a gutter here in the middle, and there's a valley fold from here, or a mountain fold that actually goes from the top to the bottom. So in this case, you have this Valley fold over here that then will create a amount unfold from the pop up. So let's start with just a double cut. So to cuts, I will use this measurement here on the scissors and this one cut over here, another cut over there. I hope the camera is just catching. It's not really all that precise, but it's OK. So the same thing that we do when we're full, the people for the first time to create a card or no card, you crease it and then you re crease it just to make the paper be flexible and also know where it's going to fold. This time, papers have fibers going in every direction, and sometimes you're going against that fiber arrogance against that green. So once it's here, what you want to do is you actually want to just bring it, encourage it a little bit to come this way and create, you know, valley fold, Mountain Valley, full mental, just creates sort of like a tug of war, if you will, where both win, both sides win and you will notice. The paper doesn't quite wanna go, so you really have to again increase it. And And there you go. This is what a double cut looks like. There's the first pop up. Now let's look at what a single single cut looks like. And I did it again. I'm hugging the corners, matching the corners, hugging them. I did a loose crease and then I put this right down here and I crease it. I re crease it and I will crease it just one more time and I'll put it down here and I will give it just one single cup Now, with single cuts, what happens is you don't quite powerful to have with a double cut, you don't have, you know, sort of like a very symmetrical way of popping the paper. So what I'm gonna do here. I have to make a choice. Either full that this way or that way or halfway. Or but I'm going to do the whole thing. And I'm going to create maybe a 90 degree angle or just a little triangle over here. So I increase it. Re crease it. You're going to hear me say this very, very often, and I want to puppet and same thing. Tug of war. There's a mountain fold here in a valley fold and doesn't want to go quite all the way. And there you go. It can be an umbrella can be anything you like, But maybe Maybe I actually want to make turn it into a double. Still a single cut, but free sit three creases and make it pop again. Just so to show you come over here, it might happen that while you're popping one, the other one goes back in, and you just you find your you find your way over there. All right, so we have these two examples over here. Single cut and a double. Now, I want to add something to this double cut pop up here sometimes what we can do is what Paul Jackson calls it generations. What happens is, once you've actually performed that double cut and the paper went in, you can actually keep going. You can keep cutting it twice, and you can keep folding until he gets to the edge of the paper. So you can see here that I actually, now I have to. When I first folded it, it was just one. Now it's too, because it's one for each one of those Valley falls that I created when I did it. But as I said, every valley fold has an opportunity for for a mountain fold. So I'm using the bone here, priests and re crease. And this gives it a really, really cool ah effect. We're gonna do that tug of war again. We're going to do that tug of war again. Where there we go. We got a mountain fold out of that valley fold and tell the paper I'm going to bring the bone later. But and here we go. And I'm just going to just make sure it's folded that way. And here we go. So we can be a stairway Utkan. The cuts could have been closer and then never and never. It really depends on what you want and what kind of note you're going to write that will match your design. Okay, I also have these two pieces of paper here because I want to show you how these these notes the notes that you're going to write. The design itself can actually change depending on the color that's in the background. So this is just a simple fold, just a regular fold hugging the matching the corners. I bring my folding bone and Greece it re crease it, and I'll put it right behind this one. And you can tell already that if the camera can pick this up, But you can tell already that this is already changing the color, or maybe the mood of the node. Or but, you know, you can actually play around with colors. Let's see what this looks like with a dark flu going to hug it again one more time and loose fold, and then I'm gonna increase it and re crease it. I'm just test it and see what happens when we put the dark blue over here. Ah, very cool. Very interesting. It would really depend on what you choose to do with this. But here you are. It changes. It changes things a little bit. Now I want to show you how I actually apply glue onto thes hearts to keep them together. The really one thing to remember at first is actually to do one side at a time. There are some exceptions there. Sometimes some folders, some pop ups that we can actually glue on on top of the paper by gluing tabs all at once. But that's later in part two and part three. But for now, well, you usually just really do one side at a time. The reason, especially because this glue works very, very quickly, you can still work on some fixes. You can still work on some changes after you glue just one side, and you don't have to commit quite right away. Let's imagine that I'm I'm happy, but I'm not quite certain that this is the color that I want. So what I do do is this is a great trick. I used paper clips, and I temporarily have them with these with these colored backs until I can compare them like I did before with the light blue and then see what I want to do with the note. But let's imagine that I'm happy with this right now, and I'm going to get my glue over here. Will put the cup, and the glue you'll see is going to be standing. And so the first thing that I do is I flush it really close to the corner. If you don't, it's not the end of the world, and I take the cap off and I tend to not get too close to the middle of the design. So I don't if the camera's picking up here. But I tend to stay on the edge, and if it's not, you know, close enough to the edge. I won't do it really all the way to the corner because it might bleed out. But this will be enough for me. And one thing that I do encourage you to think about always, always, always, is to do the roll over method, which is you start from the inside from the crease, and then you roll the paper over to the outside. What that does is it keeps the paper from buckling or trapping little air bubbles inside and forgot the cap here goes, and we're gonna do the same thing on the other side, so I can tell already that I don't have a lot of wiggle room to move the paper around. So here we go. We're going to do the same thing. I start over here and and the reason I don't get in the middle, it's because maybe later on and might want to stick something in the middle there in the middle of the paper, something that may come out pop out or something that may do something different. I may decide to, you know, glue something, or a mechanism that will pop out when the card opens, and we're going to see this, actually, most especially in part three. So here it is. It's glued and it looks like a note card, and you're good to go 4. 4. Booklet of Notes: all right. This design is very popular because if you look at it, it looks like a bug's mouth. And a lot of beginners like to create their own, their own characters. And pretty soon you have a talking frog. Maybe, uh, you can even put a bug in there, and it's It's a very popular designed to begin with. All right, so let's imagine, actually that your note. Let's imagine that you you wrote, um, maybe a vertical note. You had a greeting here. And one thing I will say that I forgot to say Here in the beginning is if you do have a lengthy note and you don't want to write on it, of course, write it before you glue the paper down. So let's imagine. I have a note here and here as well. And then another note here. I might even want to write some things over here and and then here. And then I finished my note here. But I really think that the person in writing this note to would really benefit from having both. Well, I don't want to put both separately, and I conclude them together. So that's one way to keep the note when your recipient reads this part of the note and they turn the page. There it is. Well, I'm They don't have to deal with different notes and remembering which one comes first, the one that comes last. Let's try this here. This will be just a straight A straight. There's no really middle section very hard to match them like that and I usually just make sure they're aligned. And sure, there they are. Put my cap back on and here you go. You have the first note, and when you turn the page, it goes right into the second note. Let's imagine, actually that you you're not a big fan of giving something that has this spine showing, you know, the two books separately, and you want to create a little bit of a mystery that they're vowing together. I'm gonna show you something that I made before I recorded this video is that it's a different one. It's same concept, but then what I did was I got a piece of masking tape or book tape or even ah, photographer, stay poor painter state any tape and I taped it over here and then it actually hit a zoo Can see the first book actually has a green cover, and the 2nd 1 has an orange one. So it's kind of cool to have ah, book, right O r a note that has this and but But it's sort of like, makes it look more like a book or or a book note. So this is it for now. Okay, you realize that all you have in the house and handy is a sheet of copy paper, and you really want to participate and start right away? Comin over there is room for everyone. And I'll show you actually what we can do with a sheet of paper to create that opportunity for you to join in. I know that video was way too fast, but basically what you do is you get a sheet of copy paper, you fold it once the long way, and you folded half. And then you keep folding half of the half as if you had an accordion like that. And here you go, and then you're going to fold it as if it were a book. So you folded the short wait. Not the long way. You folded the short way. And right here in the middle, where there's this line here, you can either rip it. I will cut it. But you can rip it as well if you don't have scissors handy. And once you do that, you open up the paper and you grab both ends here. So you had it this way, and you're gonna turn it halfway here 1/4 of the way. Rather, you hold the paper like that until you see this, you pinch those ends and you just created a little book. And in that little book, there are plenty of opportunities for you to create. Wherever there is a valley fold, there's an opportunity for a mountain fold. There's an opportunity for a pop up. So you have a three page note that you can actually use right now, right here. And if you want to pop something up, you can always just come over here, pretend that this is all you have and then pop up over from this side. So do this. Now, let's imagine that if we have ah to cut pop up, coming here will increase it. Recre sit. And it will pop in right here. And you pinched the ball friends again. Go back to your book. And here you go. You have your first pop up, and then you can keep going That way. You unfolded. Get to that crease and you keep going. 5. 5. Demos 1: Now, I'm just going to show you some samples based on what you just learned from now, just with single cuts, double cuts and some generations. So why not start with an example of that little book like, ah, note that you created from the copy sheet. So I labeled myself here, front and back to So I remember, um and you can see this one. You can actually see a faint yellow here in the in the back of this, and I would probably just make a picture here or put a different color paper. My notes would go over here, and I want to show you, actually, that I put the color back there for two reasons. What it's because in this kind of book, if you fold everything, do you see, you can actually when you when you lifted. And I'll show you this in a minute. You can actually see the other folds showing through. And I didn't want that. I wanted to really have a look and to see what it would look like without all that noise in the back so I could use different colors. But what I actually did, as I said, at the beginning, I just used a sticky note because it can put it in or take it out and I would like to show you. So here, hopefully the camera's picking this up. You can actually see the back of the other one. This is the one here is just a single cut and it curved. So let me just quickly show you how I made that. So I have my hug it. I loose crease and increase it and I re crease it over here. I basically just did want one, and I wanted the umbrella to go like that. I just went like that. And then he right over here. I created that sort of like triangle fold from a single cut and over here, increase it and re crease it. And then when I come to the middle, here is the card, and when I cop it, so I make sure that the valley folded and here you go. This is the umbrella, and it's for, but it's just one single cup. I would like to show you a Siri's that came from using that single cut and turning it into a tree. We were having a conversation at home on how to, ah, we could actually send pop up notes for our Christmas cards. So I thought Okay, well, this is great. And it's looking kind of plane. So then we evolved to this version over here where we did a double cut and then a single cut for the tree. And then one of my Children said, Well, why don't we take advantage of the bottom? And instead of just having the treat floating on top of the presence, why don't we just make a riel closer to reality anyway? So this is what we came up with. And then we would have turned to the gifts and two flaps where we told people what the rial gifts are for us during that season. So that was one version. And then this year, we had a conversation about OK, but what do we do this year? Well, we still wanted to stay with a pop up version. So this is the version number one. We wanted to make a tree. That was a little bush here, and but I was still not really all that, um, happy. The one thing we discovered is in order to make this work, we had to have even number of cuts. So I wrote myself a note, and the cuts are all slanted, uh, looking up. So we created it in green paper and it still didn't look all that wonderful. And then all of a sudden, we decided to eliminate the sides, and this is what we came up with. So it might be that we go with this one this year, But it's another way to use pop ups and then fill the paper with personal notes to people. Another example. Here you can actually write notes, separate notes to three different people. In this case, I actually had photographs off my nephews, and I actually put each one of them standing in front of these air, just double cuts, but they create a tab. And then this tab held pictures of my nephews, and each one had a separate note 6. 6. Demos 2: with a single cut is similar to the umbrella. I just made this little wave here, and actually I took advantage of that pop and I put myself a vote there. This I do love sailing, and this was a note that I made for a friend who went sailing with me. Here's another example with a two cut pop up. This was a note that I made for one of my Children, and it says you are important to me. And then I call it the Because note. And I gave my son lots of reasons for why I love him. Another note from a single cut I This is just a mock up, really? But I drew flowers and I had a note here and a note note here, and actually, I offer this. It was to celebrate Spring, and I had a little flap here with a little envelope with some flower seeds inside. Another example. Here you can actually write notes, separate notes to three different people. In this case, I actually had photographs off my nephews, and I actually put each one of them standing in front of these air just double cuts, but they create a tab. And then this tab held pictures of my nephews and each one had a separate note. All right, this is a serious that I used at work to welcome new people. We were having a series of new hires, and one of the things that that we actually came up with we did was again out of a single cut. We actually had ah, welcome cards for our new colleagues. And we use the pop up for pictures of buildings that were around our office and this is in the Boston area, So it had it held information. So where, uh, our colleague could find business cards and manuals and so forth, and it had the official address on the card itself. And then here we had people coming over for a conference. And then this is what we ended up giving to conference goers. Of course, this was printed, but this it did have some addresses that were personal. So this was the mock up. And in Boston, we had some buildings near the conference hall and they were just some tips on where to find good food. Places to see during breaks in the middle of talks. And so I wanted to show you also that generations piece that I showed to you before, instead of doing a generation's peace with two cuts to follow again, I took advantage of this bottom part over here. And this is just the generations a cut within a cut. And this was, um, a school project that one of my Children developed on city lights. So the cities that are creating the, um, like pollution and that's what he came up with. This is an interesting example. Using generations where a teacher actually just came up with a multiplication table and this is the three table and the four table. She ended up actually making a whole booklet that was used as a resource in the classroom with their Children. This is a neat one where the generations only applied to that top layer. So let me just actually demonstrate this here, and the candles are posted notes again. I wasn't sure whether I wanted them below the frosting or above the frosting. All right. For this, I'm going to use a larger card. So again, the idea is to hug the paper, hold it in place loose crease and then you really come and you increase it one time and you re crease it and you just crease it again and going to create sort of like that, this bottom layer here. And I'm gonna go like this. And like this, this is just really I'm just eyeballing this right now, so I increase it and I re crease it and I pop it. So what happens is if I if I keep cutting both, then I'm going to pop something on the top and the bottom. But if I really want to make this cake over here, I want to keep the bottom free. So basically, what I do is instead of cutting both, I only cut the top one the just the top layer wherever I want to, and then I crease it. It's just a little tricky to re crease it the other way, but we do what we gas, and I probably might just count on increasing it after it's folded and right there. And why not create just one more just to hold the top idea, increase it, and then I'll pop it an exception to the rule and then increase it again. And here you go. It is that very rough birthday cake note. But then you can just fill. You have so much space to write a personal note to the birthday person. 7. 7. Demos 3: Okay. Now I want to show you something that I created for a friend where the notes would start over here and my friend would see the notes this way, and then it would change the notes and it would go this way. So they started horizontally. And then they changed it to go vertically. And who knows? I could have continued here and gone all around, but you can actually notice that there are a lot of creases re creases, but you can see that they're counter creases. It's when whatever it pops goes also backing. And I wanted to show you how I did that. It follows the same pattern that we have used so far. So I have a pre double cut card over here. But basically what I what I did here was I created account agrees. If you don't want to cut right here, you just go back and you just have to then pop it inward. So increase it and re crease it. So you go and and then this one here goes in this way, and you can create a number of you saw that I also created sort of like a generation species here on top. This is actually to show you where you can go with your with your project for this glass, you can actually go anywhere here. Generations Piece is always the one that gets a little, very little space. But if you can see it's very similar, right? And I could go on and make some cuts over here, you know, Unfolded or I can make cuts right over here is, well, it's a little tricky, but it's not impossible. So if you are an adventure, if this works for you better than the other way crease and re crease, it's very important to keep going back and forth. It just gives the paper a little bit more, more of a permanent nature. So there you go, so you can just really create all sorts of designs with this. For this kind of method, you create creases and counter creases, and I wanted to show you also what happens if let's imagine this is all you know, all plain and how really bringing some color or even just white on white can really change the mood of the note. For example, if you have a dark color or light color or, um, you know, a warm color or cold color. Now I want to end the demo portion of this class with my favorite Siri's. I call it the House Siri's, and it shows you 123455 different ways of making a house with just a single cut or cut methods that we use over here. So this one. So what happened here was the house had its base, but I also needed to create sort of the the roof. And then I stuck. I think this is a posted notify. Yeah, it is a It is a post it note. It's a very sticky one, but it is a post it note to make the chimney. And then I wrote a note. These these were for friends who were moving into their new house, and I remember cutting the windows out also when I added some color, this is a mock up, but I also wrote down the recipe, so to speak. Or, you know, if I couldn't remember off what I what I did, which was to use one straight line here for the base and then a tilted line here to make the roof. So I wanted to show you what this looks like actually in paper. So if you can see, there is the that straight line and the Thea slanted line over the mountain fold out of that valley fold. Here it is. Here is the house with a double cut. Right here. It is another house from that series. Is that this time? If you want to, we can compare the two here. I actually I actually took advantage of the bottom like I did with the other one. So I created just one slanted, one slanted line. And then I created just a straight line here to make the door right here. If you want to see what I did, let me just un undo what I did here. And I created just from one single cut. I took advantage again off this straight bottom already. I created the body of the house and the roof and pump them up this way and then created a house. And after I created the house, I realized I wasn't so happy because it just really quite didn't look that even the roof looks slightly smaller than the body of the house. So what I did was and I made again. It's the same single cut, but I don't have. You can see it here. I would have folded it right here, but I decided to fold a little sooner instead of to show you here, do this instead of folding it right by the line, which would have brought me over here. I actually folded it a little sooner. And I saw that they left me a little bit of roof space to play with. So that's what I did. And I think that this one looks much better than this one. But you might like the one on the top you can see. 8. 8. Final Project & Wrap-Up: all right. If you have been following along and you have been trying to make your own pop ups, you might have one or two projects already ready to go. So this is the time that you get to pollster Project a poster idea and shared with us, and I'll be so excited to see it. And remember, the final project is really to use all of the techniques that we looked at in part one. And if you just feel that you just want to use one that's also fine, just close. Whatever you have, there will be great to actually fill the gallery with many projects and thank you for taking this less and I'll see you in part two.