Materials and Tools

These are the top 10 items you should have when making pop up cards:

Card stock/paper:  I recommend using 65lb paper card stock.  This thickness paper is rigid enough to stand on its own so that your pop up card can stand up straight, but thin enough to easily cut by hand using an X-Acto knife.  It also will have less wear on your cutting machine blades than thicker card stock. If you use a cutting machine, I would recommend NOT getting card stock that advertises “smooth finish”.   For some reason, my cutting machines do not cut “smooth finish” card stock well.  For example, do not get “Wausau Bright White card stock item #91904.”  My blade snags on this paper all the time.

Cutting Machine:  This will make your life much easier.  Instead of cutting out all the detailed templates by hand, this cutting machine will do it for you.  Also, you can make multiple cards much easier.  Most of my templates come with cutting files that you can use with this Silhouette Cameo cutting machine.  I’d recommend also getting Sure Cuts A Lot or Make The Cut software to cut the templates because they are both better than the software that comes with the cutting machines.

Silhouette cutting mat:  For best results, use a fairly new cutting mat with your cutting machine.  Overtime the cutting mat will degrade with use.  When it loses its stickiness, the paper may start to snag.

Silhouette cutting blades: You should also use fairly new cutting blades.  Dull blades are also a reason why sometimes the paper snags.

Self-Healing Cutting Mat:  As you may have noticed in my videos, I use this cutting mat to protect my desk.  It is self healing so when you make a cut into this mat, it “heals” and will not affect future cuts that fall in the same place.  A good cutting mat will also prolong the life of your knives.  If you dont have a cutting machine, invest in a good cutting mat.

X-acto Knife: If you do not have a cutting machine, then you will need to use a sharp knife to cut out the parts of the pop up card.  Even if you have a cutting machine, an X-acto knife comes in handy when making unplanned cuts or to carefully fix small mistakes made with your cutting machine.  Do not buy cheap knifes.  I have bought cheaper knifes in the past and they get dull quickly and make your life a hell when cutting intricate parts.

Tweezers:  Tweezers are great to glue very intricate or  detailed parts together.  Tweezers also are helpful when you gluing parts down.  They help keep your fingers clean so that you do not stain your card.  Tweezers are also helpful when removing parts from your cutting machine mat.

Elmer’s Glue: I use Elmer’s glue for everything.  It’s a very strong glue that has just about the right dry time for me to work with.  It’s also cheap.  But be careful, if you have any of this glue on your fingers, you will stain your card.  Too much of this glue creates wrinkles in the paper.

Glue Stick: A glue stick is easier to use than the Elmer’s glue.  It’s not as strong, but it works well for most cases.  It also does not wrinkle the paper, so I like to use it when I need to glue a lot of area together.

Repositionable Glue Stick:  This glue stick allows you to separate paper that has been glued together.  This is useful when printing out the templates and using the print outs to cut the patterns out of card stock.  Use this glue to stick the template onto the card stock.  After cutting out the pattern, you can remove the paper print out template.

Scissors:  Scissors are useful when cutting templates into smaller pieces.  Scissors are also easier to use to cut out round objects, which is sometimes difficult with a knife.

Envelopes:  Most of the cards use A6 envelopes.  These envelopes are 4 3/4″ x 6 1/2″.