Paper Engineering Books I Love

 Last night, we headed over to walk down Peacock Lane to see the holiday lights (a Portland tradition) with a family I didn't know. The dad went to college with Tad. Since they had one boy the same age as our twins, it seemed like a good idea to get to know each other.

I knew they'd be nice enough, but in the course of chatting, the mom mentioned how she'd been making pop-up cards.

Zing!

I was instantly interested and begged to see her work.

Now, often, when people do crafts, there's a WIDE range of quality and creativity, so I was quite pleased to see some very clever little mechanisms involved with her cards. As we talked excitedly (and Tad murmurred something about the wives being "separated at birth") we found that we could discuss people and techniques with each other that would bore others silly (and, indeed, we had to keep stopping as we realized that we were monopolizing conversation in talking about Robert Sabuda's work, brads, angles for pop-ups, etc).

We've started to correspond. I think I've gotten her quite interested in my beautiful and faithful Craft Robo (and in talking with her, I've fallen in love all over with it) and we've promised each other a "play date" in which she could come over and see how it works. (all of her work is cut out by hand. She did pop-ups for her holiday card one year, which I find amazingly ambitious! I can't contemplate doing the same myself even with the luxury of automation!)

I wanted to share some of my favorite books about interactive cards with her and so I created this list on Amazon: Must-Have Books for the Interactive Card Designer.

Enjoy!