Make Your Own Pop Up Card St. Patrick’s Day Craft
We had lots of fun making this St. Patrick’s Day pop up card. This St. Patrick’s Day craft is fun to make and a great kid made card!
Pop up cards are all the rage in our house at the moment. It all started when my daughter watched an episode of Mister Maker (a British art and craft show) where they made one. Since then ALL of our crafts have had to be pop up! We were originally going to make a simple rainbow card, but she insisted that it if it wasn’t a pop up card then it wasn’t worth doing!
You’ll notice that this card has a 3 leaf shamrock. I have to confess to being confused when searching for the image – should it have 3 or 4 leaves? While this seems to be a controversial issue on the internet, my research indicated that a traditional Irish shamrock, which we use to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day should have 3 leaves and not 4, so that is what we went with.
For this card, we also tested out our new watercolor pencils. If you don’t have these you can use regular pencils or pastels instead, but they are worth investing in. (They’re not expensive). To use these, you color as normal and take a paintbrush and paint over the colors with water. It gives a lovely watercolor effect, and the pencils are often easier for younger children to work with than regular watercolor paints.
These watercolor pencils can be used for tons of activities, like these right here.
St. Patrick’s Day Craft Pop Up Card
I’m sure you’ll have great fun making our pop up card. My 5 year old loved it and has already gone on to make a few different versions of it.
Materials
- White cardstock
- Green cardstock
- Green glitter card
- Adhesive gems
- Glue
- Scissors
- White printer paper
- Watercolor pencils
- Paintbrush and water
- Printable shamrock
How to make a St. Patrick’s Day pop up card
For the front of the card encourage your child to draw a rainbow with the watercolor pencils. I thought about using a printable for this, but I like to encourage free drawing as often as possible. If they need help, encourage them to draw a cloud on one side and a pot on the other. Then make the rainbow stretch to meet both. You’ll notice that our rainbow doesn’t have the correct colors – I kept quiet and let my daughter do it her way.
You’ll then want to cut out the rainbow and fold your green card in half (make sure the picture fits). Glue the rainbow onto the card and that’s your front cover finished.
You can either free draw a shamrock or use the free printable one that we have. Because the glitter paper generally doesn’t do well in a printer, I printed my shamrock onto plain printer paper. I then turned over my glitter paper and my daughter stuck this on the back. This gives you a template to cut out. Depending on the age of your child, some help may be needed for this part.
Scissor cutting is an important practical skill, so it’s worth letting your child give it a try.
Once we cut out our shamrock we stuck some of our green adhesive gems on for a bit of decoration. This wasn’t a planned part of the activity, but what can I say – adhesive gems are addictive to kids!
Now you need to cut out your white card so that it is the same size as your green card. Then cut two slits (as pictured) in your card. You’ll notice that I don’t cut the paper out completely, I only cut straight lines. When you turn it over it should like the second image. The slits should be smaller than the width of your shamrock.
When you open your card fold the slits so that they look like the picture below. This is where you will stick your shamrock.
Glue your shamrock onto the front of the ‘pop up’ slits. When you open the card the shamrock should stand up.
I really hope that you enjoyed this St. Patrick’s Day craft card. My daughter had a great time making it and couldn’t wait to write on it. She then decided she had to have enough to hand out to all of her friends so we made quite a few more throughout the day!
I would love to see how your card turns out!
Want Your FREE Pop-up Card Printable?
You can grab it here!
I’m Carol, an Australian Teacher and the Mum of 2 toddlers who have LOTS of energy. I spend my days finding simple and fun activities to keep them both busy and love sharing our crafts and activities with you. I believe that toddler activities don’t have to be expensive, and that simple activities can provide great learning opportunities for young minds.
Thanks beautiful ❤️