Snow Elf Manor Pop Up Card

In keeping with tradition, here is 2021’s origamic architecture / kirigami holiday card.

Inspired by the 2015 Snow Elf Cottage, the Snow Elf Manor is a larger home in the snow elf community. This was fun to design. The cards were cut from the Arctic Gold stock with translucent vellum for backing the windows.

I made a short (5 minute) video showing the whole process of building a card.

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So wonderful, thank you for the video! I love your work.

Wow, I learned a lot from your explanation.

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dang, that is some great work. best I have seen in ages.

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That is so pretty! I’ve bookmarked this for future reference. :slight_smile:

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That’s just amazing. I love popup cards!

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Wow, @evermorian, this is awesome! Thank you for sharing the video of your process. I am inspired!

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Thank you so much for this video. This is a lovely elf manor.

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Cool!

What gadget did you use to move the camera for the panning shots?

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I have a little motion-control robot:

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Neat, thank you!

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You sir are a master of ‘Origamic Architecture’.

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This is so full of wow!! I love the front steps and door.

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How cool is it to lay your design out and score the folds - as opposed to ‘the old ways’?
It’s a puzzle you solve by not only the design but by making the bends go right. I can see the draw of that craft. The concentration required is a form of meditation.
I’m sure your friends and family look forward to the cards you send. :kissing_heart: :ok_hand:

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The first cards I designed did not involve computers at all. I laid them out on graph paper and, cut them with a scalpel or craft knife. In some cases, there were also isometric pencil drawings. The first holiday production run I did (42 cards) was brutal on my hands.

Being able to lay them out in a vector editor was a lot easier and, made changes less difficult.

Then came the plotting cutters. The first one I played with was a commercial sign cutter but, companies quickly moved towards making machines for home crafters. The second one of those I got (a Bosskut Gazelle) was good enough to cut some designs. Those still put pressure on the paper as they cut and, friction can do a lot of damage. Smaller detail can be difficult. It helped with prototyping and, I could knock out some designs pretty quickly. Those machines are still great for some things, like plasticized stock, which looks awful when laser-cut.

At that point, some of my friends had commercial laser machines for cutting cards and, wow, did I want one of those. Cutting paper without putting any physical pressure on it is the bomb. The Glowforge showed up and, was a lot more affordable than the other laser cutters I had used. Having one right here makes prototyping and production SO much easier.

For one of my earlier videos, I cut the same card with both the Gazelle and the Glowforge:

I did a design for a festival a few years ago that appeared in a zine distributed to attendees. I made a video showing how to cut that one by hand:

Together, those kind of show how it progressed as the technology matured and got less expensive.

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My goodness——you are an amazing artist. The video is GREAT.

Congratulations you are now a Glowforge Super Hero.

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Cool! I guessed from your age that you came up analog, you have a better appreciation for the tech that way. With the control over power, you can easily embellish the designs with engraving also.

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Thank you for sharing. It’s incredible!

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Love this. Your work is beautiful and your artistry inspiring.

Thank you!

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Absolutely beautiful! Making cards like this is fun!!

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Saw this on Instagram and loved it! The video is great too. There are some very helpful tips for working with card stock in there. Thanks!

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