How to Make a 3D Card

With all this time in lockdown, I came up with this idea one afternoon and thought that I should try it out. The end result was much better than I had initially anticipated. This project is very easy to customise and make your own. It's perfect for a quick DIY greetings/birthday card. What's more, most of the supplies can be found lying around in your home.

1 sheet of A4 card

A craft knife

A pair of scissors

A pencil

A ruler

PVA glue (A glue gun would be useful too!)

Access to the internet and a printer (unless you have a map lying around!)

I simply did a basic google search to try and find a map I wanted to use for this project. I am aware, that there is a variety of websites out there that will let you create your own maps, but that's up to you to decide as to what map you go with.

Once you have found your map, start by printing it off. Ensure that the map is relatively big and high quality. You can easily enlarge it using Microsoft Word for example. The photo above shows the one I used.

I had in mind doing a butterfly for this project as it would be quite effective on the card, but feel free to choose any anything you want. I will walk through the steps of creating a butterfly, so it may differ slightly to making other objects.

Taking your map that you have printed off, fold it in half and draw on the outline of a butterfly quite big.

Next, taking a pair of scissors or a craft knife and carefully cut around the outline you have drawn.

Tip: I found using a craft knife to be more effective as it allows for a more precise cut.

Repeat the previous step, but this time ensuring that the butterfly is slightly smaller than when you first cut it out. Do this a couple more times, progressively getting smaller each time. This will allow for a really cool look when we bring it all together.

Taking an A4 piece of card (paper can also work ok, but try layering it up to make it thicker), fold it in half. With the largest butterfly that you have cut out, fold it gently in half so that it resembles the shape of a butterfly that is flying.

Glue the fold line using PVA glue down to one of the top corners of the card. Make sure to put a little extra PVA either side of the fold to help make this piece stick well. Once this is glued on, take the next smallest butterfly and repeat the process, glueing it down onto the larger one. This one should be at a steeper angle to the larger one, making it resemble a butterfly flying. Repeat this again for the last one.

Tip: I found that using a glue gun and putting some blobs of glue to prop up the wings worked really well.

Feel free to personalise the card as you wish. I simply drew a couple of circles in pencil and cut them out using a craft knife. Then I rubbed out the pencil smudges and twisted a pencil through the holes to make them all roughly the same size and shape. As there was some space towards the bottom, I wrote a message onto the card, but that is purely up to you to decide if you want to do that.

That's it, you're done!

Sit back and admire your work!