Vintage St. George & Dragon Pop-up

This "Saint George and the Dragon" papercraft pop-up scene comes from the 1945 children's book, Bookano Stories Pot-pourri Edition. The word "potpourri" in the title refers to the fact the book features a collection of pop-up stories from other pop-up books by the same publisher. This reproduction was created by Alfredo Podestà who used the original book as a guide for his model. The PDF template for the scene may be downloaded from Alfredo Emotions.

Other Antique Papercraft:

Montgolfier Balloon
Elephant Pagoda
Printable Dollhouse
Paper Anatomy Model
1910 Tram Car

Pop-up Holiday House Papercraft

Canon offers a huge assortment of tiny DIY papercraft projects in their "Miniature World" collection. The seasonal pop-up books in the collection are some of my favorites. Pictured is their "Happy Holidays" book which features a four room pop-up house that is decorated for Christmas. Canon estimates it will take 3 hours to build the house.

Other Christmas Papercraft:

Vintage Nativity Diorama
Martha Stewart Collection
Hexagrammic Christmas Tree
Winged Reindeer Ornament
Origami Angel

UPDATE 12/3/25: Sorry, Canon no longer offers this papercraft. :(

Pop-up Origami Angels

These origami angels from David Brill can be folded to be either free standing figures or greeting card pop-ups. The folding pattern for the angel is a modification of a "Christmas fairy" origami. PDF Folding diagrams of both the angel and the Christmas fairy may be downloaded from David's website located here. Also available from David is a video tutorial showing how to fold both versions of the angel.

Other Christmas Papercraft:

Melting Snowman
Winged Reindeer Ornament 
Praying Angel Origami
3D Coca-Cola Bears
Krampus Paper Toy

Pop-up Papercraft Skull

This pop-up paper skull was the 343rd skull Noah Scalin made as part of the "Skull-day-Project" he completed in 2008. Noah describes this piece as "more of a paper sculpture than a truly functional pop-up piece". The pop-up achieves a good 3D effect considering it has only three parts. Like to try making one yourself? The PDF template for the skull may be downloaded here.

Other Papercraft Skulls:

Mini Video Game Skulls
Robot Skull Paper Toy
Automata Skull
Articulated Momento Mori
Tektonten Skulls

Space Invaders Pop-up

The first arcade I remember frequenting had mostly pinball machines. In amongst the pinball machines were two black and white video games: Asteroids and Space Invaders. These pixelated space invader pop-ups bring back memories of carefree hours spent in that arcade. The template for the pop-up invaders was created by Popupology and may be downloaded for free on their website. The invaders are small enough that six of them may be printed on a single sheet of cardstock. The color of the pop-ups in the photo was achieved by printing on yellow cardstock.

Previous Pop-up Papercraft:

8-Bit Video Game Characters

St. Paul's Cathedral

Day of the Dead Skull

Spanish Galleon 

Tower of Babel Ziggurat

Tower of Babel Ziggurat Pop-up

Some scholars associate the Tower of Babel in the Bible with the ancient city of Babylon. So it is no surprise this Tower of Babel paper pop-up was designed by Elod Beregszaszi to be in the form of a Babylonian ziggurat. A PDF template for the tower may be downloaded here.

Previous Paper Pop-ups:
St. Paul's Cathedral
M. C. Escher's Relativity
Masonic Trestle-Board
8-Bit Video Game Characters
Parthenon

Printable Pop-up Papercraft Dollhouse

Who says learning can't be fun? This printable pop-up papercraft dollhouse was created by the Konica Minolta company to teach kids about things they can do in their house to help prevent global warming. Each of the four rooms in the dollhouse is a separate PDF download available at the Konica Minolta website. Although the instructions are in Japanese, the excellent photos allow one to build the dollhouse without knowing the language.

UPDATE 3/1/21: The original download links on the Konica Minolta website have become unreliable. An alternate download of all the individual PDFs contained in a single ZIP file may be found here.

DIY Easter Pop-up Card

I like the effect of this Easter pop-up card. The white cutouts of the trees, bunnies and flowers give it a an almost lacy appearance. The template download for the card comes with a PDF file as well as two other file types tailored for use with electronic cutting devices. This pop-up was created by Carol at Extreme Cards and Papercrafting. Happy Easter!

Pop-up Paper Galleon

Roger Pattenden is an professional designer of architectural paper models. This pop-up paper galleon is a free download from his website, Heritage Models. The model is described by Pattenden as follows:

 "The design is loosely based on drawings of 16th century carracks, trading ships with high fore and aft decks. They were the forerunners of the later galleons, which were highly armed warships."

The download for the ship includes both templates and detailed instructions with diagrams.

Parthenon Paper Pop-up

A free download of the template for this Parthenon pop-up is available at Paper Garden. The Parthenon was completed in Athens, Greece around 432 BC and is considered by many to be the pinnacle of Doric temple architecture. Paper Garden showcases the papercraft work of Sakyo K. Also available on the same page as the Parthenon pop-up is a template for a pop-up of a Christian church.

Pop-up Paper Skull

One of the many items offered by Carol at the Extreme Cards and Papercrafting blog is this pop-up paper skull. The pop-up may be used as a greeting card, but it would also make a nice decoration for the Mexican Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) coming up in October. The template for the skull, along with instructions, is available here.

DIY Pop-up Coat of Arms Cards

Many families of European descent have a coat of arms. A coat of arms is a symbolic image used to identify a family. The origin of this practice dates to the 12th century when symbols were painted on shields to identify individuals and groups on the field of battle. Marivi Garrido has created pop-up coat of arms greeting cards for 29 different surnames.  The free templates for the cards are available for download here.  If you can't find your surname among those offered, no worry, with some basic Photoshop or hand drawing skills Marivi's GIF templates can be customized. I think it would be fun to have some pop-up crests for the four houses of Hogwart's from the Harry Potter books (another item to add to my to-do list perhaps? ^^)

St. Paul's Cathedral Paper Pop-up

Elod Beregszaszi creates paper pop-ups based on a technique developed by Japanese architect Masahiro Chatani. This pop-up of St. Paul's Cathedral is a free sample of Elod's work which may be downloaded as a PDF. St. Paul's Cathedral is a well known landmark in London, England which stands on the highest point in the city.

8-Bit Video Game Character Pop-Ups

The Cubeecraft website now has a side project of pop-ups called "Pixel Pages". As you might expect from the title, these pop-ups primarily feature classic 8-bit video game characters, however other pop culture characters in pixelated form are available too. Pictured above are Link from Legend of Zelda, Disney's Scrooge McDuck, Gizmo from Gremlins, and Mega Man. Templates for all 32+ characters may be downloaded here.

DIY Pop-up Photos

Wikihow has a simple tutorial on how to create a pop-up from a photograph or magazine image. All that is required is several duplicates of the same photo, scissors and a glue stick. Detailed instructions with pictures are located here. Now what did I do with those vacation photos from last year? ^^

Masonic Pop-Up

This paper pop-up with authentic Masonic symbols was created by Guy Spivey, a member of a Scottish Rite lodge in North Carolina. Spivey intended the pop-up to be a 3D "Trestle-Board". A Trestle-Board is a board mounted on a trestle (easel) on which architects in ancient times drew their building designs. In Masonic lodges today, Masonic symbols are drawn on Trestle-Boards instead of architectural designs. The template for this pop-up may be found here. The build photo above is by Sevenworlds16.

M. C. Escher Relativity Paper Pop-up

In recent months I have come to appreciate 3D paper pop-ups as a form of papercraft. One of my favorite pop-ups is this one based on Relativity, a 1953 lithograph by artist M. C. Escher. This glue-less pop-up was built out of a single sheet of standard size cardstock by Flickr member Bryan Peele. If you are interested in building one yourself, Bryan's template for the pop-up may be found here.