Pop-up pen pals: L-word card

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I found tutorial videos for this card and a square envelope and made my own. 

For the design, I started with the words "Live Laugh Love" and kept going with other words that begin with L.

photo of final cards, folded and unfolded. In the closed position, there appears to be a diamond stacked on top of a square, an illusion created by folds in the paper. The square behind the diamond pulls apart to reveal that each vertical half is one side of a long, horizontal card. Several facets that appear upon opening were not visible before. The main diamond says "live laugh love," and each other panel contains another word that begins with L. I apologize that all my other posts have poor image alt text, but I will try to fix that moving forward. If you are a person with poor vision listening to this, if you contact me with your address I will mail you one of these cards.

Design

I did some math so that the folded shapes would be the right size to be mailed with regular postage within the US and rounded down so each segment was easy to measure, then made a template in Illustrator. The top shape is the card, the bottom shape is the envelope. Magenta lines are for cuts, cyan lines are for folds.

Screenshot of cut and fold lines for the card and envelope

I traced each facet between the fold lines to get shapes I can cut from bright paper and glue to the white base

Screenshot of triangles that will become the decorated parts of the card

In Cricut Design Space I added the text to these panels (it will only allow me to use a limited number of fonts as fonts instead of outlined shapes, which is a constant irritant to me as a designer)

Screenshot of the card content blocks with words placed inside


Production

Prototype of folded card base and decorative triangle shapes added to the facets between each fold
All-white prototype with rough word panel placement (also where I discovered that I forgot to create word shapes for two panels so I had to go back and add them...this is what prototypes are for)


photo of the prototype word blocks for the card

After experimenting with placement, size, and type of marker, I decided I was ready to make the final versions.

Prototype card, all white paper, folded position, testing word placement to make sure everything that should be hidden is hidden
Closed prototype, successfully hiding the words on the opening panels

photo of three cards; the first is a folded base, the second is a final unfolded, the third is a final that is folded
unfolded blank base
unfolded final
folded final


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