A Pop-up Bouquet for Mother’s Day

Today’s post contains instructions for making a pop-up bowl of flowers. It was designed as a Mother’s Day card, but you can also make it for yourself — my gift to you for helping me reach 500,000 views as of Saturday morning.

The structure for this pop-up is a collapsing multi-layer box. I used this once before to make a DIY pop-up tunnel book, Euclid’s Dream.

To see alternative methods of construction, read all the instructions before you begin.

To make your own copy (or a copy for your mother) print out Mother’s Day Bouquet on lightweight card stock. Score all the dashed lines that mark the folds for the glue tabs. (Tabs are indicated in pink below.)

The page includes leaves and flowers for a bouquet, but you could draw or paint your own. If you are looking for inspiration, a simple Google search for ‘flower bouquet’ will generate plenty of examples.

Cut out all the parts and pre-fold the tabs. Try to cut right on the outlines.

If you are making this as a Mother’s Day card, sign the back panel of the pop-up —the part without tabs— before proceeding further.

Take the back panel, centre it on the back of the bowl and score along the vertical edges. (You can draw a faint pencil line if you don’t have a scoring tool.) This marks where the edge of the pop-up part of the card will be glued.

To assemble the pop-up, take one side panel (small rectangle) and attach one of the two cross-pieces (larger, tabbed shapes) by gluing the tab on the larger piece to the first vertical section of the rectangle. The edge of the panel tab should sit approximately along the fold of the rectangle tab. Carefully align the top edge of the panel with the top edge of the rectangle when gluing.

When your glue has set, fold the panel to the left and attach the second panel. This time be careful to match the bottoms of the two panels.

After the glue on the second panel has set, glue the back panel to the tab at the end of the side piece. Make sure that the bottoms of all the panels match. (If you are making this for your mother, make sure the printed greeting side is facing out. If you are making this for yourself, you can reverse the panel so that the back of the pop-up is blank.) Your assembly so far should look like this:

Now glue the remaining tab at the front of the side piece to the back of the bowl. Use the score line/pencil mark you made on the back of the bowl to locate the outside edge of the unit. Align the bottoms of the pop-up panels with the bottom of the bowl.

I assembled my pop-up unit first and then glued the flowers and leaves in place. You may wish to add your flowers and leaves before assembling the pop-up unit, as this makes it easier to have everything lined up when the pop-up is open. Just stack your panels in place behind the bowl and position your flowers/leaves where you prefer.

I began by adding parts to the bowl. (The smaller zinnia went on the front.) I also designed everything to fit in a standard ‘invitation’ envelope (11 x 14.6 cm/4.325 x 5.75 in). I kept an envelope handy while arranging the flowers/leaves to make sure everything would fit inside the envelope. If you make your own envelope, this is less of a concern.

The next three images show the location of parts on the three panels. These are approximate. Feel free to make your own arrangement.

Glue the tab of the second rectangle to the inside of the back panel, folding the rectangle over and pressing firmly after ensuring that the top of the rectangle matches the top of the back panel.

After the glue has set, open the rectangle to the right and fold the tabs on the inner panels to the left. Apply glue to both of them.

Fold the rectangle back to the left and press firmly on both tabs.

Put glue on the remaining tab of the rectangle (see pointy finger above), fold the whole pop-up unit to the left and press the tab in place. It should line up —approximately— with the second score line/pencil mark, and the bottoms of the pop-up panels should match the bottom of the bowl. The latter is more important than the former.

Open your pop-up into a small rectangle and voila: a bowl of flowers.