Rats in Love Standing Pop-up Card

My fiance and I needed a holiday greeting card as interesting as our mechanical iris card from last year, and we wanted it to do double duty as our wedding save the date announcements, so we came up with this cute rats with heart shaped tails design that stands up on its own. 

The idea to make it a stand up card was inspired by a corporate xmas card we got a few years ago (it looked like this). You can read about why we went with rats and see some of my early sketches for the card over on my blog.

I've added the template to this instructable so you can make this adorable card for your valentine or any other rat lovers in your life.

To make this card you need:

• the template provided with this instructable
• cardstock (at least one letter sized sheet)
• glue (I used rolling glue dots but a glue stick or white glue would work as well)
• an X-acto knife or scissors (or even better, a cutting machine)
• a printer

Optional:

• puff paint or sequins for the eyes
• different coloured cardstock
• lace, fabric or other embellishments

Print the template.

Carefully cut out all of the pieces.

Decorate the rats and background. I added a small dot of shiny black puff paint to each rat for the eyes and cut the top hat out of black velvet craft paper. For our save the date cards I used an image of a concrete wall for the background and added a little lace tutu to the smaller rat.

Glue the top hat onto the bigger rat.

Put all the pieces together.

There are 5 bottom spacing strips, 3 long ones for the middle and 2 shorter ones for either side. They slide onto the big background piece so the rounded corners are facing up.

Add the 2 rats and the front piece and you're ready to go.

The card folds flat to fit into an invitation sized envelope. If you're mailing the card, put it in an envelope upside down so it is easier to pull it out.

I hope that you and your valentines like the card! If you make one of your own, please share a photo in the comments, I'd love to see them.