Pop Up Greeting: Presents For The Inlaws

The SIL, FIL and MIL birthday presents for 2011

I'm trying to catch up on posts here...

What do you give for someone who has everything they need already? I don't want to get a present just because it's a present, I'm the kind of person who cares enough to puts effort and time into a gift. And I'm fortunate enough to have the talent, skill and experience to make these for the inlaws. I figured this was perfect, there was no picture of their first grandchild and niece in the house yet, and this way I can personalised each one to them. I had help from the SIL to get the pictures done for me, and she helped chose which print to use for the parents, I have already finished hers so she had no say, haha.

Gave their presents for the year early and belated during my daughter's first birthday celebration, and they are proudly displayed on the shelf. You know it's a compliment when people asked where did they buy them. Interestingly enough everybody liked the MIL one, it was the most tedious and simplest one to make. I thought of making more of those...

More pictures can be seen here.

Pop Up Greeting: Star

I was asked to make something for a guy by his wife for his birthday. She wanted something that he can have at work for his table. The thing that came to my mind was the pop up book/folder/frame watchamacallit.

The original colour scheme she gave me was blue, white and black, and he likes planes. But when I saw the photo she provided the colours won't flow, and my other dilemma was how am I going to make planes work for me?

To cut a long story short, I went with stars, like he's the star in his family eyes, yeah I thought, that'll work.

Going with the blue gold base and echoing the red from the photo's background, the gold stars popping up against it was just fantastic.

The client loved it, the husband loved it and I was told it's sitting proudly on top of the mantle at home, he dare not risk bringing it to work and have it ruined. More pictures can be found here.

It just occurred to me that every time I make something like this it's always for a birthday...

There's one for Muji

There's one for Her Majesty...

I wonder when will the next birthday request be from and to whom, I quite enjoy making them. I can picture this for anniversaries as well, that would be nice...

My Wedding: The Wedding Invitation

Continuing on the wedding series, man I'm really dragging it out aren't I...

The front of the invite

Pop up flower!

Close up of pop up flower

I designed the invitation myself, keeping to the colour theme of the wedding. The intention was to keep the design minimal, non fussy and low cost. I stuck with black and white with a shot of red. For those of you who got cards to do, keep the following in mind when going to the printers. Factors that pushes up the prices are:

1. Any die cutting (cut shapes other than a straight line)
2. Any embossing (those raised patterns on the cards)
3. Any foil leafing (usually text in gold or silver)
4. More than one colour (more inks and mixtures of inks to get the colours you want)
5. Extra pages inserted in (more paper, more inks)
6. Fancy envelopes (especially if it has to be customised to the cards)
7. Type of paper or card used (anything which isn't a flat non laminated or pearlised)
8. Awkward shape (more paper had to be used to account for wastage)
9. Any extra emblishments that needed to be added on (more work)

So, the fancier your invite, the more it will cost.

For myself, I designed my wedding invite around the pop up flower. I already knew how the card was going to come out physically with the prototype I made and had the information laid out using Illustrator. I then bought the prototype and the file to the printers, after fiddling a bit more on the file with the head designer the layout was done. Chose the paper and came back a week later to collect all 600 pieces.

During that week I hunted for the right shade of red and grey for the flowers. 600 pieces of red and 600 pieces of grey flowers were needed. To see the process of making them click here.

Then it took me another week to stick all the flowers together and into the cards. I glued half in already when I realised the glue I was using was staining the card which was visible on the front, I half hoped majority of the people who recieved the invite had poor lighting.

After the wedding mom announced she held back 100 pieces. I slightly had a fit because we could've invited more or save money and time on not having to print out that extra hundred and make the extra hundred flowers.

So what am I going to do with these extra cards, If you're interested in recieving a wedding invitation with the pop up flower, email me with your address and I'll send one over to you.

P.S, my wedding invitation worked out to just under a $1 each. Not including the cost of pizzas for the volunteers to help cut the flowers out.

Her Majesty's Birthday Greeting

Apologies for not updating regularly, there's a reason, hopefully it won't be for long because it's very draining. Anyhoo, it doesn't mean I've stopped taking orders and if I haven't gotten back to your email or messages, don't worry, I've already blocked in your order in my time schedule, I just haven't discussed the details with you yet.

One of the orders came from the Brunei Women's Group. I think specifically Bistari because it was the president that got in touch with me. How she got to me was because she was impressed with my wedding card (Woohoo!!). Few things she asked me to do, one was create a birthday card for Her Majesty which they are hosting a function in honour of her, the second one was to design the program book for the function.

With the timeline that was given, I could only do one or the other, and I wasn't so keen to do the program book when they already have the committee for it, or else why have the committee in the first place right?

Now the president wanted something nice to give to Her Majesty, and I showed her some of my previous works and she imediately latched onto the one that was given to Muji, and wanted that! The pop up flowers did it.

With colour scheme in tow, dictations over the phone on the greet, photo CD delivered to my place, and several hours just individually gluing every single flower and heart gem, that was after agonising over trying to get the right colours for the internal, this was presented to Her Majesty in celebration with the conjunction of her birthday that was held at the International Convention Center last Saturday night. Through twist of fate I had to be sick that night, go figure...

The original colour scheme given was peach, orange and yellow. I was very worried on how to make all that work, until I remembered they were only a starting point. I picked the base as peach and used my eyes to get the most pleasing colour combination when picking out the flowers, with touches of gold from the bow and heart shaped gems.

With the bow undone and the doors partly open...

I used a textured deep bronze for the insheets and coincidently it matched the photo. I used a particular origami paper to create the vibrant pop up flowers and punched out smaller flowers to tie in the overall look. The frame looked a bit empty and used more gems to fill it up. The body of text on the right have extra space for the Bistari president's signature.

The president was happy when it was delivered and was thinking of asking me to do the same thing for her next wedding anniversary, sure, more than happy to, I'm just a call away!

The Invite Card - rambling rambling...

I'm designing my wedding invites, it's more or less done. Just need to talk to the printers and look for the right paper. I'm going to fold and cut up 500 pieces of flowers. Between me, my cousin and several other people, it is possible. I just need to find the right paper, cut up into squares and fold them up into triangles.

Mom has been reminding me to keep the card simple. Just make it a regular card she said. No need for the fancy shmancy pop up she said. I'm not going to make a fancy shmancy pop up. Even I know I don't have the power to make a fancy shmancy pop up in the time that is left. My cottage factory only exist when the need arises and even then they can only do so much.

I made several mock ups. The first one, I was like, yeah, this is it. Simple, nothing to it. That was the inside, open up the card and a heart pops out, text all laid out on either side. Then I did the outer part of the card, family list, cover. Thought I was being clever with the rounding off one end of the rectangle. Then I stepped back and realised it looked like a giant silhouette of a tampon

Scratch that.

Fortunately, the fiance's invites were already done. They were lucky, the place where they're having the do is packaged with the invitations. I like the typeface it had. I went back to mine and rid of the fancy shmancy curly type I had earlier, it was just messy as there was so much text to fit in. The malay language just have too much protocol.

Following the steps of the other half I did a simple layout with an overhead fold (A4 folded in half). Arranged the text to one side leaving space for the flower. Made a mock up and it worked. There's an empty space at the top left corner and I don't know if it's something I should fill in...

I tested out the mock up and my subject, aka sister, was suitably impressed. Hence, the plan will continue. Meeting printers next week, in the mean time, will look for suitable paper for flowers. It has to be red, as the card will be on pearliest white with black print. I shall live up to my motto, make do with what's available locally and maximise on it.

There are also mini invites for the other two functions, since those will be in a smaller run, I feel that it's easier to print them out myself. And it's designed smaller still, it'll be on an A6 format. So 100 pcs = 25 print outs... (4 per sheet of A4).

and the other one 50 pcs = 13 print outs on A4.

I just need to buy a pack of scented rose print on white for about... how much did I buy for a pack of 100... less than 40 bucks that's for sure.

If I buy them 40 cents per sheet that's... 25 + 13 = 38... multiply that by 0.4 = 15.20 bucks... oh, much much cheaper... if I buy stack, I could always use the rest for other projects... will have to think about that one.

Still have to factor in how much the printing of cards is going to cost at printers and how much the sheets of red paper is going to be. I'm aiming wrapping paper, that'll be about a dollar per sheet at the most. Just need to know how many squares I can get out of a sheet. A ballpark figure of maybe 12 squares at a dollar per sheet will give me.... 40 bucks! That's a lot to spend on wrapping papers...

And if the printers are going to charge me say, $1.50 per card that's another $750 for 500 invites. Shit that's expensive... work out each invite is going to cost $1.58. And if it's the one with the extra invites that'll be $1.78. When you break it down to unit cost that's cheap.

But I haven't factored in the, will we be using envelopes? Are the envelopes thrown into the price or is that an additional price? The pizza to be ordered for the flower making crew and assembly? And the glue used for assembly, not counting time and effort put in... My cousin and I have been brain storming this, when it comes to the planning and doing, she and I are gold.

I think I can keep it well below $800.

Must take pictures of mock ups and final pieces when ready... if I remember to charge up my camera.

This is going to be fun

I'm curious, how much did your invitation cards cost?

Oh gosh, I just remembered, I have to do 50 handmade invites for a friend's wedding!  

they changed their mind, they want a guest book now...

Current Love!

I saw this on Amazon. No clue what inside would be like...

Went out and bought it

(Sister went on day trip to Singapore, asked her get it there, bookshops here sucks, seriously)

She came home and handed book over.

I opened it up and...

*GASP*

It's beautiful!!

Greeting Pop Up Flowers Book & A Happy Birthday To Muji

Yes I finally gotten around to offloading pictures from my camera, and no I have not found my camera cable yet. Fortunately I could use my fiance's cable since we both have the same digital camera model. It was our Christmas presents.

Photo from Rano

Anyhoo, check this out, I made that purple thing up there that's smack dab in the centre of the picture that Muji (in purple) is exclaiming wow over. (I was informed by the client so it's true, thanks Haryanie) The ones giving it to her were my clients, nicest people ever, they came to see me a couple of times to discuss what they wanted.

They asked for something special, and I invited them to come over to see what I have and discuss on what it was that they were looking for. They liked the idea of the engagement folders that I had made and asked for something similar and supplied me with a photo. And my only other lead was purple, she loves the colour I was told.

My challenge was, how to make it different enough and something that I'm happy with? Rule of thumb, if I'm not happy with it, neither will the client.

And you know what she was looking at?

Pop up flowers greeting card book/folder

This.

It all came together on the nth hour. The right material just happen to land on my table, the right colours popped up and I happen to have all the colours in various forms, like they were waiting in anticipation. I was quite stressed making this but it was worth it. Smart, simple yet stunning. When I presented it to the clients they were really happy with it complete with audible gasp. Hey, it worked! Why, because the element of surprise were the flowers. They popped up.

The partially opened flower

All those pop up engineering books I have helped. I was able to solve the structural problem in order for the flowers to open up properly. It was so simple. Yet so effective.

Detailed shot of the front of the book/folder

And when the covers are closed, it's held by a double bow tie with a cascading flower gems on the front of the purple glittered chiffon covers.

Really love those pop up flowers....

What I Did Today

I spent all afternoon looking up for pop up books I'd like to add to my library...

I LOVE pop up books! Good pop up books. Paper engineering is such a skill. Creativity in engineering.

Have to start finalizing on the pop ups I planned on making this week, plus a piano hinged structure to house them in, 3 to 4 commissioned books to finish, and prepare for the next class before mid month... Oh dear... :-s

Pop Up Hearts On Black

We (My H and I) just had our anniversary and to commemorate, I made this for him. The idea has been playing in my head for ages, and finally broke free of its chains and controlled the hands to make 'the book'... weelll... it's the prototype really... and it worked!

With the help of this book...

I knew of this book when I used to work with Ron King when I was a student in uni, and I love love love pop ups. But back then being a student, money was a bit tight and I only managed to get my hands on this book several years ago, it cost a pretty penny (in this part of the world) but it was worth it.

Gotta plan a book for Valentine's next....

Pop Up Flowers Book

Unassuming isn't it... Until you open it up and this pops out...


Don't remember how long it took to just cut out all the shapes. It would be alright if I had a bunch of people cutting out the forms for me... or I have some sort of die cut press to cut out all the shapes... And then putting them all together... So far I have made two of these books. Better make another one as spare for when someone decides to order it... More pictures here!