A dinosaur pop-up card!

Now that there's a brand new nephew in the family, I have an obvious destination for some of my more cute crafts, and since his birthday is coming up, I made him a fun little pop-up, featuring one of his favourite obsessions, a dinosaur.

Now, I'm one of those people who don't read instructions, I simply find it more fun to figure it out for myself, if possible. So this isn't so much a tutorial as a quick demonstration of how I made this fun little card.

I started out by cutting the shapes I wanted to use: one dinosaur (in his favorite colour), one dark green background in a leafy sort of shape, one leafy leaf in a lighter green and one spiky in lime. The dinosaur and the dark background got a base for standing on.

Once I had all the parts of the pop-up, I cut a piece large enough to act as the main card for the pop-up to sit.

The reason I didn't make the bases of equal sizes was because I wanted the dinosaur to stand a fair bit in front of the background. Since I didn't know the exact angles, I left enough paper to have it butt up against the green so it could act as a guide. I'll show you in a bit.

 

Once I'd folded the base, I marked and cut it down the middle. I also folded the pop-ups along the same line. 

The photo shows the fold inwards but since the pop-up is going to fold into the card, hiding inside it, make sure to fold it the other way around. Imagine the v-shape of this photo below, turned into an "A" or a mountain shape instead. (You'll see what I mean further down).

Before moving on to the assemblage, I added details using coloured pencils and glued the leaves onto the background (I used double-sided tape because that's what I had available). 

Now comes the tricky part!

Since I wanted space in front of the pop-up to add extra decoration, I placed the base of the background at the very top of the paper I was using as the main card. The fold (and cut) of the base goes right in the middle of the card, just where the card itself folds. 

By folding the two sides of the base and letting them overlap in the middle (where I made the cut), I could make the paper stand up on its own without flopping over. I adjusted it until I found an angle I thought would work. Then I cut off the bits sticking out of the card's edges.

Then I took the dinosaur and overlapped its base the same way I did the background. And by pushing it up against the background, I knew that the angle would be exactly the same and there would be no risk of the folds not fitting into each other. 

Here you can also see what I mean about the folds going outwards rather than inwards. 

And here's the finished card, with added leaves and text glued flat onto the card itself, both inside and on the front of the card.

Do you think he'll like it? I used all my nephew's favourite colours and subjects so I expect a nice little reaction video sent in return. ;)