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How to Make Pop Up Cards - Words and Tabs - Lesson 10

Creating pop up words with or without tabs tutorial

How to Make Pop Up Cards Tutorial
This is Lesson 10 in a series of step by step tutorials on How to Make Pop Ups. 


How to make pop up words without tabs
Determine where you want the crease to fall across your pop up words, near the top, near the bottom, or across the center.

Create a box the size you want your text to be (shown as grey box) and add text inside box.



Create two new identical boxes, the same width as the text box (shown as red boxes). These boxes form the “roof” of the pop up and determine how far out from the card the words will pop. They also control where the crease falls on the letters.

 For a center crease the two boxes must be exactly half the height of the text box. Shorten the boxes to shift the crease toward the top or bottom of the word.

Align the top of one smaller box with the top of the text box. Align the bottom of the other with the bottom of the text box.

pop up cards words

Now draw in the card center fold line. Align it with the inner long edge (arrows point to these edges) of one of the smaller boxes. Here it is aligned with the bottom box. In this design the crease will end up nearer the top of the letters.



In this example the top box lies on the fold. The crease will be nearer the base of the letters.



Draw in your cutting and folding lines.



Cut and fold.




How to make pop up words with tabs

If you are using tabs, there are some fonts that do not work well, depending on what letters you need. If you need an "M", "N" or an "A" check to make sure the tops of the letters are somewhat flat, not pointed. You need enough width to attach a tab to.

For example, of the five fonts shown, the top three fonts will work well with tabs, but the bottom two are too pointy.




Create a box the size you want your text to be (shown as grey box) and add text inside box.

Create two new identical boxes, the same width as the text box (shown as red boxes). One is placed inside the text box and one is placed outside.

In this example the bottom of one smaller box is aligned with the top of the text box, and the bottom of the other is aligned with the bottom of the text box.



Here, top of one smaller box is aligned with the top of the text box, the top of the other box is aligned with the bottom of the text box.


Add fold lines, cutting lines and tabs.

Cut and fold.

My buddy at cleversomeday reminded me that she has a pre-made tabbed font on her site. If you want to take the cheater pants way out. Just kidding :) You have to poke around her site. There's oodles of great stuff there.