Mother’s Day Pop Up Card: Rose Flower

06 May Mother’s Day Pop Up Card: Rose Flower

I finally finished this rose flower pop up card for Mother's Day.   This card is also great for Valentine's day and birthdays.  It took me a few weeks to design this popup card. Years ago, I made my first rose pop up card designed by Chatani. It was an amazing card but required sewing and was somewhat complicated to assemble. Somehow, I felt that it didn't look enough like a rose because the petals were all inline with each other. Over the years, I've always thought about creating my own rose design to see if I could make a pop up card that looked as close to a rose as possible. The rose is probably one of the most difficult flowers to make, and as Chatani put it, “Rose is, indeed, the queen of flowers.”

What makes the rose difficult to make is it's asymmetric nature. The petals spiral inwards layer upon layer overlapping each other. I created individual petals on the outside ring that interlocked in a way such that they look like they overlap each other. I connected all the petals together in the second ring because I wanted the petals to be offset from the outer ring. The rest of the petals are similar to the outer ring where they overlap their neighboring petal. This gives the rose a spiral look. I find that this gives the rose a much more realistic look than the other pop up or folding roses out there. The center of the rose was the most difficult. I spent days trying different shapes to make the center look realistic. I ended up making 3 tightly spaced petals which I'm finally happy with. Here is what the card looks like.

I created this design using 3D computer aided design software. This really helped because it allowed me to tweak every angle of the petals to make it just right. The flower started out looking like a head of lettuce.  I varied the angle of each petal a degree here and a degree there to get all the spacing correct.  I made all my tweaks with the CAD  model so I was able to make the card work perfectly on the first try.  Here is what my CAD model looked like.

This card is relatively easy to assemble.  It only needs a little tape or some small amount of glue to secure the tabs at the bottom of a few petals which are simply slotted through the bottom of the card.   Here is an image of the card half way folded so you can see how the petals fold together.

You will get a much better idea of how this card folds by watching this video of he card in action.

The tutorial for this card can be found here: Tutorial for Rose pop up card.

You can purchase the template for this card here: Rose Pop Up Card Template.