Pop-up card maker

The box, or step fold, is the easiest: two slits per box are cut straight into the card and folded forward, so nothing extra has to be glued except the pictures standing on the boxes. With two or three boxes of different depths the pictures stand in layers. The V-fold uses one large picture glued across the fold, which rises out of the card and leans towards you as it opens. The tent is a separate strip glued to both pages that stands up like a banner, which is ideal for a big word such as a name or “Thank you”.

Box and tent cards use a portrait sheet folded in half across the middle, so the card opens upwards: 210 × 148.5 mm (A5) from A4, or 8.5 × 5.5 inches from US Letter. The V-fold card uses a landscape sheet folded down the middle and opens like a book: 148.5 × 210 mm from A4, or 5.5 × 8.5 inches from Letter. The A4 card fits a C5 envelope and the Letter card an A9 envelope (5¾ × 8¾ in).

Solid black lines are cuts. Blue dashed lines are valley folds, which fold towards you so the crease sinks into a V, and red dash-dot lines are mountain folds, which fold away from you so the crease points up like a ridge. Yellow areas are for glue. The same key is printed on the third page, together with a 5 cm bar to check that the pages printed at the right size.

Cutting the pop-up leaves slits and holes in the inside sheet. Gluing it into a separate cover hides them and makes the card stronger, and the front picture and greeting go on the cover. Glue only the areas away from the slits, so the boxes and pictures can still move freely.

The PDF uses the standard Helvetica and Times fonts, which cover English and most Western European letters, such as é, ü, ñ and ß. Emoji and letters of other alphabets cannot be printed with them, so they are left out, and a few accented letters are replaced by their plain form, such as ş by s. The tool shows a note when that happens.

It is free, with no sign-up and no watermark. The previews and the PDF are made in your browser; your text is never sent anywhere. The pictures are original drawings made for this tool and are fine to use for your own cards.