a little 3d

I've really missed hanging out in the studio over the past few months, so Mother's Day provided the perfect opportunity to dabble in a little 3d paper play. 

I extracted an old calendar with illustrations of European castles from my basket of paper-craft goodies. Any image that has a tiered composition with background, mid-ground and foreground has the potential to be turned into a 3d model. It's just a matter of carefully cutting out each tier using a fine x-acto blade.

In this case, a stone wall separated the castle from the large public courtyard in front of it. You can see that by separating the background and foreground and holding one piece in front of the other, you immediately have a 3d model. Simple as that.

Here's another example of an image that has four tiers and can be turned into a more complex 3d scene. I'll probably make this one into a small model in a box.

To make a 3d card from the cut out image, you stick the back section of the scene to a folded backing card in a contrasting colour and attach a small tab to the front tier and stick it in place, like so:

Then, when you open the card, a cute 3d scene appears before you.