Tutorial - Asymmetric Box Card

If you love funky, mind-bending, pop-up cards then today's tutorial is right up your alley! The asymmetric box card has a central section that pops up in a most perplexing way when the card is opened. Once you've figured out how it works you'll want to create lots of different variations just to test how far you can take it... the last photo in this post is the result of a happy afternoon spent cutting, folding and measuring!

CUTTING TEMPLATE: 

SCORING TEMPLATE:

1. Since there are so many cut lines, score lines and measurements, I created two templates to make it a little easier to follow. Place a 6" x 8" piece of card stock horizontally on your desk and use a pencil and ruler to mark in the cut lines - refer to the cutting template for placement and lengths. Use a craft knife and ruler or a trimmer to cut along all six lines.

2. Now place the card stock on horizontally on your score board and score in all the lines indicated in the scoring template. In most cases, the score lines begin and finish at the ends of cuts.

3. Folding each score line is the tricky part as you don't want to add any folds where none were scored. Take your time and carefully manipulate the card stock to fold along the lines indicated. Refer to the photo below for the direction of each fold.

TOP VIEW:

4. Decorate the inside of the card with patterned paper or stamps. Due to the difficulty of cutting the paper to fit the shape of the card, either piece together the background with small rectangles of paper, which is what I did, or create a template with a piece of printer paper.

5. Add an image and sentiment to the right hand pop-up section. I left the remainder of the right side clear so I'd have a place to write a personal message, but you can decorate with patterned paper or stamps if you prefer.

6. Create a card base for your pop-up section by scoring a 6" x 81/16" piece of card stock in half. The extra 1/16" is to allow a little more room in the spine of the card to accommodate the pop-up section. Place the card stock horizontally on your score board and score at 4", then move it slightly to the right and score again so you end up with two score lines side by side (see the photos below).

7. Decorate the front of the card base as desired. I stamped and coloured one of the large sunflowers from the Hello Sunshine set and layered a sentiment over the top.

8. Flip the pop-up section of your card and add glue to the outside sections only (see below). Position it on the inside of your card blank, taking care to line up the right, left, top and bottom edges. Use clips to hold the card stock in place as it dries.

Once I figured out the basics of this card I spent some time playing around with different designs. It was fascinating to see how many variations I could create using the basic principles of the pop-up section!

Stamps: