St. Patrick's Day is a great holiday for crafting. This year I decided it would be fun to make some pop-up cards. You could really use any motif for these pop-up cards: shamrocks, a pot of gold, a leprechaun, or a rainbow like I did.
All you need for this project is paper in rainbow colors (I used cardstock), scissors, and some glue dots. You could use liquid glue or a gluestick, but I didn't want the paper to warp at all, so I decided to use glue dots.
For this project, I free-handed all the shapes, but if you don't want to do that you can use a template from the internet. An easy way to remember the rainbow colors in order is "ROYGBV" (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet). Cut out a half circle or gumdrop shape of each of those six colors, making each one a little smaller than the next. The white paper is for the cloud shapes.
Once your shapes are cut out, you are ready to prepare your card base. Fold the piece of paper (mine was 8.5x11") in half. On the folded side of the card, use scissors to cut four slits (two on each end) of the card as shown below.
Start with one cut on the left end of the folded side of the card...
...then cut the other three notches as shown below.
Once you've cut your notches, you can open the card and pop out the paper tabs. This is what you are going to attach your rainbow shape to for the pop-up card.
First use the glue dots to assemble your rainbow in ROYGBV order.
It's optional to cut out the center of the rainbow. I think it could look cute either way. Once you are satisfied with your rainbow shape, place glue dots on the bottom part of the tabs cut in the card.
Line the bottom of the rainbow shape up with the bottom of the paper tab slits, then press onto the glue dots to secure.
You should now have a functioning pop-up card. Hooray!
Now you can embellish the rainbow card with clouds and a happy message for St. Patrick's Day.
I plan to send these happy cards to my grandmothers for a little love via snail mail. Who would you make a rainbow pop-up card for?
