Flying Butterfly Pop Up Card with Pull Tab

Flying Butterfly Pop Up

The pull tab mechanism was shared by Duncan Birmingham on his YouTube channel. I combined the 2 types of pull tab he used to make this kind of flying butterfly effect for a pop up card.

Here’s a step by step tutorial with template to create your own:

Depending on the tools you have on hand, you can either print or use cutting machine to cut the template. If you don’t have a printer you can refer to Duncan’s YouTube tutorial for the measurements.

Once you’ve cut out all the necessary templates, it’s time to assemble the card. For the pull tabs, you need to fold and glue each tab to add thickness to it. It will help make the mechanism work smoothly.

This is how you will fold the LEFT wing pull tab, it move differently from the right pull tab.

For the RIGHT wing pull tab, this is how it should look. It consist of 2 parts.

Once you’ve assembles the tabs, you can now insert it to the base of the card. Look at the image above for the reference on where to add each tab.

For the LEFT wing tab, once you’ve insert it on the base card make sure the back side looks like the image above. See the 2 small tabs. You don’t need to glue anything for the left tab.

While on the RIGHT wing tab, you need to glue it to the base on the card. See image above for reference.

Try to bend the left wing tab in order to be able to insert it on the base card, you can opt to insert it before gluing it on the base card so you’ll avoid bending it.

Finally time to attached the butterfly wings. You can use different themes for this card, instead of butterfly wings, why not use a bird’s wings instead or a hand? lol Possibilities are endless.