PS154 Pop-Up Page Making Workshop 6/02/2021

 

PS154 Pop-Up Page Making Workshop

6/01/21

It was great to welcome back Ray and the brothers Samuel and Adriel who did such amazing work last week. As we thought they might return, Spica and I modified our Lesson Plan to accommodate them, so we were very pleased to see them at 6pm tonight. 

As we will learn how to transform simple paper cuts into more elaborate pop-ups in this lesson, we began with a transformation exercise as our warmup. Taking an everyday object, students are asked to transform it into something else and use it, so the rest of the class can guess what it is. Ray transformed a bottle into a hair comb, Samuels’ pen became a sword he used “en garde”, and Adriel transformed a pair of scissors into a bar of soap he uses in the shower.

As inspiration, Spica and I shared pop-up books of tables and chairs we had made. We asked them to look around their room and notice the chairs and tables and think about the multitude of uses. With their materials at the ready, the students eagerly began. Using the techniques, they’d learned last week they made their base page then learned how to make a V Fold stand. This is the mechanism which allows an image to pop-up when the page is opened. Once the two V Fold stands were in place, they chose different colored paper to make a box by cutting a narrow strip, making a tab and accordion folding the rest to create a cube. An essential engineering step is to ensure the box lies flat when gluing. They used this same method but with different dimensions, to create another box, which became a table. Next, they carefully glued them into place on either side of the first V Fold stand, making sure that when the page is closed nothing juts out. 

To transform the boxes into a chair and table they cut out legs and made a back for the chair and a tabletop from different colored paper. In order to complete the page with a background we extended the class for a few minutes after 7pm and the students were keen to continue. Applying the lesson that nothing must jut out of the closers page, they measured a piece of paper to use as their background, by resting it against the back V Fold stand closing the page and marking out the paper which emerged. This excess was cut off. 

Samuel’s table and chairs were yellow and the tabletop, red on which he placed an open book. Behind the table his background revealed a rainbow and a large heart. Behind the chair he drew a large TV on a stand, which was glued to the V Fold stand. Adriel made a blue chair with a high back, which featured a diamond cut out design. His yellow table had a red top, on which he placed his phone. For the background he made a pink wall on which he placed a yellow painting, and cleverly drew on the wall hooks and wires. Ray used recycled paper to create his page including the two V Fold stands. We totally encourage this and it’s refreshing to see young people embracing this idea. He chose pink paper to make his table and chair and used a cut off from that paper for his background, which featured a wall cabinet behind his chair.

What great fun we had creating pop-ups from paper and using our imaginations to design a room!