Pop-Up!

The last class I taught this year for NSCAD Extended Studies was a pop-up holiday card workshop over a whole weekend. I ended up with only three students (though four registered), so it was an intimate class, but it meant I was able to give each student more one-on-one time if they wanted it. I'm notoriously bad at taking photographs of my classes, but I did take some pictures of a prototype I started during the class--at first to demonstrate the process and then for something to do when the students reached the point where they didn't need my immediate help (I love that, but it does make me feel a little useless).

Because I wanted this card to be the sort of thing that the recipient could use as a holiday decoration year after year, I needed it to be able to lay flat and stay flat when opened. So instead of cardstock covers, I built it like a book. That also allowed it to be a more substantial-seeming gift, and meant it didn't even need wrapping.

I was cutting this quite quickly from a very rough sketch (so I didn't bore the students while they watched the process), so a lot of the final shape is more-or-less freehand. So the deer are a proportioned a little oddly. You can also probably tell that my knife was not quite as sharp as it should have been.

I really like, though, how the simple white shapes layer on each other to create something with depth. You can, of course, use coloured paper, or draw or paint on the shapes, but I wanted something simple and elegant. White-on-white is simple and elegant, right?