I love to make cards and pop up cards add an additional level of fun! For this pop up birthday cake card I am going to show you how you can easily create the template in Cricut Design Space. If you do not own a Cricut you could follow along and cut this with just an ordinary pair of scissors. If you do not want to make the template yourself I have a Pop Up Birthday Card SVG file you can purchase HERE.
Make a birthday card extra special with this Birthday Cake Pop Up Card SVG. You will get three SVG files with this purchase. One file will have the elements for the inside of the card, one file will have the score lines needed to make the birthday cake pop up card work, and the third…
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Pop up Birthday Cake Card Supplies:
Besides a cutting machine, like a Cricut, a cutting mat and a blade, you will need the following supplies to create this birthday cake card design. I have linked the supplies right to Amazon to make shopping easier for you!
- 5×7 blank card base
- Cardstock
- I used one color for the cake, a second color for the inside of the card, a third color for the front of the card and the drips of frosting on the cake, a fourth color for the backing of the card front, and a fifth color for the numbers on top of the cake.
- If you purchase your cardstock from 12 x 12 Cardstock Shop make sure to use coupon code SHAWNM10 to save 10%
- Scoring Tool
- Tape runner with double sided tape
- Glue/adhesive
For the front of the pop up birthday cake card I did a faux shaker card. For this you will need
If you are going to make the pop up birthday cake card from the SVG file that I have linked above, you could head over to my YouTube channel to watch the video that goes along with this tutorial, or scroll to the bottom of this article. In that video I will show you how to upload the SVG files, center and attach the score lines and assemble the pop up birthday cake card.
If you would rather learn how to create the pop up birthday cake card in Cricut Design Space, you can follow the step by step directions below.
For my pop up birthday cake card, I started with a blank white base. I actually like to purchase blank cards and envelopes when I see them on sale so that I can just embellish them quickly if I want to for a fast card. If you would like to make your own card base you can check out my tutorial on how to make a basic card with your Cricut HERE.
I used a 5 x 7 card, so if you are setting this up in Cricut Design Space you will insert a shape of either a square or a rectangle. I used a square and unlocked it so that I could make it 10 inches wide and 7 inches in height. Next, I went back to the Shapes button and clicked on the score line to add that to my project. I made the score line 7 inches in height since that is the same height of my card base.
To quickly and easily center the score line on the card base, just select both of them at the same time and use the Align function. You can just click on the Align and then Center and you will see the score line snap right to the center of the card base. Do not forget to click Attach after you have centered your score line. This will ensure that the score line stays locked in the center position when the Cricut cuts and scores your card.
Inside of pop up birthday cake card design
Now it is time to make the inside piece of the pop up birthday cake card that will actually make the cake “pop” off of the card. To start with I will click on the rectangle that is the base of the card and use the Offset button, but instead of sliding it to the right to create a larger rectangle, I am going to slide it to the left. This will create an inset, or a smaller rectangle.
I made mine 1/4 inch smaller, so if you are typing a dimension into the Offset slider tool make sure to type -.25, since that minus in front of the dimension is what will tell it to go to the inside of your design and make an inset not an offset.
If you are not making your own card base and just want to use a premade blank card base, then you can simply make a 9.5 inch by 6.5 inch rectangle for this step.
Creating the pop up birthday cake card mechanics
Now that we have the piece that will be the inside of the pop up birthday cake card created, we need to add on “the mechanics” or parts that will actually pop out of this insert piece. We will use a combination of cut lines and folded score lines to create these elements.
Go to the Shapes button and insert a score line. On the top of the Cricut Design Space canvas click on the Operation pull down and change the operation of this line from score to cut. Now this line will cut with a blade instead of scoring with your scoring tool.
Rotate that line 90 degrees so that it is a horizontal line. Change the length of that line to be 4.75 inches. This length is very important to this card! Let me explain why.
The overall card, when folded in half will be 5 inches wide, so we want this cut line to be less than the card width. If we made it longer than that, when we folded the card there would be parts of our cake pop up elements that would extend to the outside of the card.
To build the parts that will look like the tiers of the pop up birthday cake card, we will need two of these 4.75 inch cut lines, so I am going to just right click on the first one and duplicate it. I will also need one cut line that is 3.5 inches, so I am going duplicate that same original line again and just change the length to 3.5 inches. Now we will duplicate one more time and make this fourth and final cut line 2.25 inches in length.
So once you are to this step you will have four horizontal cut lines, two of them will be 4.75 inches long, one will be 3.5 inches long and the last one will be 2.25 inches long.
Next we will have to add score lines to the sides of all of these cut lines, so we will go back to our Shapes button but this time we are going to leave the operation as score. We are also going to leave it so that it is a vertical line, but we only need it to be 1.5 inches tall so we can just change the height and we are ready to go! We will need a total of six of these score lines, one for each of the three tiers of the cake, so we can just duplicate this one score line until we have 6 of them.
Now I am going to teach you how to use the Align function to arrange the score line and the cut line so that the corners of them touch. I am going to start off using one of the two 4.75 inches lines.
At the same time, select one cut line and one score line, and then go to the top of the Cricut Design Space screen and select Align. Within Align you will use the pull down to select Align to the Top. This will bring the tops of the cut and score line so they are even.
While you still have both of those lines selected, go back to the Align button and choose Align Left. You will see that the score line and the cut line now come together to form a corner. With both of them still selected, go to the lower right corner of your screen and select Attach.
Attach will hold them in place exactly how you have them lined up and positioned. You can now move those two lines around together and they will stay “stuck” exactly like you want them.
Now repeat this same process with another score line to create a corner on the right side of the cut line. To do this select the set you just attached to each other and another score line, then choose Align Top. Then with those same items selected choose Align Right, and then select the Attach button. You will now have one horizontal cut line with a score line attached on each side of it to form sort of an upside down U shape.
Repeat this entire process again with the 3.5 inch cut line and the 2.25 inch cut line. When you are done you should have three different sized attached sets of cuts and score lines that look like an upside down U shape. To complete our three cake tiers we will take the last 4.75 inch cut line and select the attached set of lines that is also 4.75 inches in width, but this time we are going to select Align to the Bottom, and Align to the left.
You will see that this will close off a rectangle shape with cut lines on the top and bottom and score lines on the sides of that rectangle. Remember, after you have everything aligned like you want it to click the Attach button to hold everything in place.
Stacking the Tiers
Now that we have the score and cut lines all attached into three groups, we are going to stack them up to form the pop up cake. I am going to be totally honest with you, this part is easier to understand when you just watch the video, but I am going to try my best to explain it here also.
Select all three sets of lines and go to the Align button and select Align Center. This will move all of them so that they are perfectly stacked on top of each other. Now all we have to do is move the middle one vertically 1.5 inches and move the smallest on vertically 3 inches so that they are stacked and stay centered.
But how do we move things an exact distance?
When you look at the grid of the Design Space canvas you will see that there are numbers down the left and the along the top. These correlate to and help you to find the X/Y position of each item on that overall grid.
If you ever played the game Battleship as a child, you can think of this grid in the same way that you would the grid where you place the ships, the only difference is in Battleship we had letters and numbers and with the Cricut grid it is a X number and a Y number. The X numbers are on the top of the Cricut grid, and the Y are the numbers going down the left hand side.
So now let’s go back to those sets of attached lines and select them and look at the X/Y coordinates of them. If you find it easier to do the math for these, you can move them all to the same Y coordinate at the same time by selecting all of them and then typing a number into the Y location in the Position portion of Design Space on the top panel.
For example, type 10 into the Y coordinate. Now all of them should be perfectly aligned with the number 10 on the grid to the left of the screen. So when you click on just the set of lines that will be the middle part of the cake, you can type in 8.5 to the Y coordinate box. This will move that whole set of lines up vertically on your screen. Now click on the set of lines that will be the top tier of the cake and enter 7 into the Y coordinate box. This will move it up to the top of the cake.
Now that you have the three tiers of the cake all stacked up, select all three of them at one time and click Attach. This will hold their position centered and stacked on top of each other so that you can now place them on the 9.5 x 6.5 inch rectangle that will go inside of your card.
Attach the Tiers to the card insert
The next step is to place and Attach the tiers to the 9.5 x 6.5 rectangle that we made for the insert of this pop up birthday cake card. Honestly, I just eyeballed where to place this from the bottom of the card insert, but you could use the same grid process that we did for stacking the tiers. If you decide to do that, I would go about ½ of an inch from the bottom of the card insert.
Then, select both the pop up birthday cake card insert and the stacked tiers and choose Align and then Center Horizontally. This will position the cake tiers exactly in the center of the card insert piece. With everything selected, make sure to click Attach to hold that placement and position.
You might think we are done with the pop up birthday cake card insert piece, but we still need a center fold line. Go back to your Shapes button and grab a score line. Change the length of that score line to 6.5 inches and use Align Center to place this exactly in the center of the cake pop up card insert. Do not forget to Attach that center score line to cake pop up card insert piece.
Decorating the pop up birthday cake card
To decorate this pop up birthday cake card I am going to make three rectangles cut from cardstock. If you are using my pop up birthday cake card svg file, you will also get the frosting drip pieces. We are going to go back to shapes again, insert a square or a rectangle, then unlock that shape and make it into a rectangle that is 4.75 inches long and 1.5 inches in height.
For the other two rectangles you can just duplicate this first one and then adjust the width. Once you are done you should have three rectangles in the following dimensions:
- 4.75 x 1.5 inches
- 3.5 x 1.5 inches
- 2.25 x 1.5 inches
Next we have to add score lines to all of these rectangles so that they will fold in the center of the card. Go back to Shapes and grab a score line. Adjust the height of that score line to be 1.5 inches. From here, I would duplicate that score line twice so that you have a total of 3 score lines.
Now using the same process we have already used in this tutorial, select one rectangle and one score line and use Align Center to place that score line exactly in the center of the rectangle. Then use the Attach button to hold the placement and position of the score line. Do this for all three rectangles.
If you would like to find a cute element like the doves I used to create a topper for this cake pop up card you can go ahead and do that also. Once you click Make It, Cricut Design Space will tell you which part of this cake pop up card it will cut first. Watch the screen for the prompts since it will tell you when to insert the scoring stylus or scoring wheel, and when you need to insert the blade. Typically the Cricut will score things first and then cut out the element.
After everything is cut, all that is left to do is to assembly the pop up birthday cake card. I am going to have you watch my video for the assembly process since that will show you exactly how to fold each part of this cake pop up card to make the cake properly extend from the card base.
Pop Up Birthday Cake Card Video
I also did a video so that you can see the entire process for using the pop up birthday cake card svg and how to put the card together. If you would like to see that on my YouTube channel you can click HERE.
I hope that you enjoyed this pop up birthday cake card tutorial!
