Canvas to the Imagination

I did a quick project yesterday to experiment with putting a pull tab mechanism, with object, into a book. I really like the results, though I’m not treating what I’ve made as a finished product. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, think back to those childhood pop-ups books where you come across a tab at the side of a page. Pulling the tab would make something move within the book. Usually the whole mechanism is made with paper, but because I want to eventually make altered books with movable parts I probably can’t only work with paper.

Pictured above is the finished project I made the other day. Below is the simple inner workings of the pull mechanism using cardstock and part of a resistor. The pattern I learned from uses a washer/lever system that comes through a hole in the background paper to attach to whatever should be moving on the front. This method is better suited to moving something back and forth, but I wanted to move the butterflies up and down. I decided to make slits in the background paper for the wires to run along when the tab was pulled.

The tricky part was figuring out how to position the wires correctly through the background paper to match up with the butterflies, and then slip the resistors through the paper once they were glued.

The finished movement isn’t dramatic (pictured below) but I’m satisfied with having figured out a new approach I can apply to something else.

Here’s the top view of the project so you can see that I actually did all of this inside a real book.

Yes, you heard that right. I am giving away free postcard sets to the mailing list subscribers for my monthly newsletter. If you’re not already signed up please go here to add your name and email address. I will be drawing three names and announcing them on Friday.

The postcard sets include five different collage images taken from my moleskin sketchbook. They’re fun, pretty, and I love getting these into other people’s hands to keep alive the tradition of sending things by snail mail.

Go. Now. Sign up.

[Edit: The contest is now closed and I have drawn the names of the three winners.)

Last week I began exploring the idea of creating books with pop-ups and movable parts. I was inspired by an artist call for submissions and decided to use this as an excuse to push even further the creative possibilities of my altered books. My first step was to go to Chapters and start looking at pop-up books in the children’s section to get a feel for how these things are constructed. I was really blown away by some of the books I found. [1][2][3]

I ended up purchasing Paper Engineering and Pop-ups for Dummies because it seemed to be an excellent resource for the kind of information I was looking for. None of the sample projects involve incorporating the techniques into existing books but they will help develop my own ideas.

So far I’ve been experimenting using the projects in the book as a jumping off point, and I’m trying to focus on learning the technique rather than trying to produce a finished product. The above two photos are of two pop-up cards I created using cardstock. I came up with my own design rather than following the instructions because I really didn’t want to make a pop-up card with hearts. I kept things simple though and made sure not to worry about what I was making. It’s important to “let go” when experimenting.

This airplane card is my first attempt at creating a pull mechanism, and again I was modifying the idea to suit my own purposes while learning the technique. It’s fascinating learning how to create a mechanism out of paper because it is way more complex on the inside than the simple movement of pulling the tab on the outside would imply.

This 3-D paper pop-up of a lotus flower is a design I came across online as a video demonstration. It looks really beautiful and complicated, but it’s actually very simple and made from a single piece of paper.

Next up, exploring more techniques and translating what I learn into creating an altered book with found objects and moving parts.