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Empty Nest Pop Up Card

This year's Christmas card theme is "empty nest," with our older child a senior in college and our younger one a freshman.

The front of the card is a combination of punched and cut shapes. Multiply 14 holly leaves and 12 branch punches (in two different colors) by 100 cards and you know how tired we got of punching!

The birds and red-brown branches are machine cut. Download the bird file set here. Includes Silhouette Studio, DXF, PDF, and SVG.

I used a holly mini punch from EK (no longer available but similar to this one) and the Martha Stewart Branch Punch.

I hand cut the circle cut-outs.

 The holly berries are Liquid Pearls (ruby red) and the snow is Galaxy white marker first, then Stickles (diamond).




Inside is a pop up bird with wind-up wings.

flapping bird mechanical card

The original plan was to create a bird that would fly right out of the card, like these butterflies. I never could get one to work, so I abandoned that plan.

I'm still not completely happy with the way these turned out. The wings were supposed to spin when the card was opened, but I think they mostly flapped once or twice, or just opened out, then stopped.

The wings are connected by a small rubber band, threaded through a piece of tubing.

The letter inside is printed on this paper. I got the graphic from an old Safety textbook (from 1938!) called In Storm and Sunshine.


bird on a wire letter

And this is the envelope graphic.

birds on a wire

Here's what my dining room table has looked like for the last two months!

bird pop up cards
Extreme Cards and Papercrafting: pop up cards, movable and mechanical cards, digital crafts and unusual papercrafts.