Pop-up!

This week we entered the world of book arts with  pop-up book design. Who doesn't love the delight of opening a great pop-up book?

As Montreal pop-up artist Natalie Draz says "there's no such thing as a new fold in pop-up design. It's basically all about the remix." With this in mind our pop-up session included two classic pop-up folds: the talk box (aka the mouth fold) and the integrated box fold.

Kids and adults alike love the talk box. Because it's easy to make and because it immediately evokes a snapping mouth. It's a great introductory fold because it gently leads our young paper engineers into "thinking with their hands". For pop-up art, the paper must be coaxed into the form.

Once constructed, the talk box can be modified. Jagged teeth are popular. As are wagging tongues…

A talk box might conceal a secret message for the reader.

Howabout this double embedded talk box a student came up with all on his own?

The integrated box fold is often seen in the form of a square platform.

A whole bunch of them together make excellent skeleton ribs.

Once this fold is mastered it lends itself to experimentation. Integrated boxes can be made at different angles and combined to create interesting structures.

Here's a nested structure in development.

Love the way the green backing paper adds dimensionality to this page.

With these pages made we started to construct a storybook. Why not use a combination of the folds on one page? Some students want to keep adding pages at home…

 This student used an integrated box to support delicate waving sea weed.

Here's a book about a mad scientist, who unfortunately blows himself up!

Some kids added text others preferred more of a comic format, but either way storytelling and design narrative started to merge.