This horse pop up card is a sweet craft that you can make and gift to someone special. Follow the step by step tutorial below to make your own card. You can use any color scheme you prefer and put your own personal spin on the card’s appearance.
DIY Pop Up Cards
You have more than likely given or received a pop up card before. These cards pack a fun surprise inside. When the recipient opens the card, a paper shape of some sort “pops out” of the card.
Pop up cards are a great choice for a kid-friendly paper craft. They aren’t too difficult to construct, perhaps with a little bit of adult help. The end result is a card that is fun to give to someone special!
Horse Pop Up Card Craft
For this craft, we will walk you through the steps to make your own horse themed pop up paper card. We added a unicorn horn to some of the pictures to show you another possible final look.
You can choose any paper colors you’d like for this DIY card.
If you want a more traditional looking horse, grab some brown, black, white and/or yellow colored paper. If you want a colorful look, let your creativity run wild!
Supplies for Pop Up Card
Gather the following list of materials to make this card craft. The paper colors listed below will result in a card that is identical to the one in our example. As I stated above, feel free to use different colors if you prefer.
- Cardboard paper (or heavy card stock)
- Glitter craft paper (Light and dark pink)
- Colored or construction paper (Purple, blue, light pink, dark pink and yellow)
- White printer paper
- Glitter (Pink and grey) (Use sprinkle glitter or glitter glue.)
- Marker
- Scissors
- Double sided tape
- Glue
How to Make a Horse Pop Up Card
Follow these instructions to make your own pop up card!
1. First, you will make the horse that goes inside of the card. You will technically be making TWO horses and then gluing them together for the center of the card. Draw a horse shape on a piece of cardboard paper and cut it out. (If you can’t draw the horse freehand, search Google images or a similar search engine for a silhouette horse shape that you can print, cut out and trace.
2. Repeat process so that you have two cardboard horses.
3. Cover one side of each horse with the glue and light pink construction paper (for the body) and dark pink paper (for the mane and tail). Note: Glue the mane and tail on opposite sides of the horse (a mirror image) so that when they are glued together, each side of the horse has a mane and tail facing out.
4. Take 2 or 3 small strips of cardstock or cardboard paper and fold them in half. Put double sided tape on one side of each half of that paper. Attach the two horses together by pressing the horses onto the tape sides of the white paper, giving it a 3-dimensional, pop-up look.
5. Now let’s work on the card piece. Take one sheet of cardboard paper and fold it in half. Glue blue construction paper on the outside of the card and glue purple construction paper on the inside of the card.
6. Once the card has dried, you can decorate the front of it. We drew a unicorn face on the front of our card using the black marker.
We then cut out some flowers from the glitter papers and glued them to the top of the unicorn’s head.
7. Cut out some cloud shapes from the white paper. Glue them inside the card and glue a larger one over the middle of the card.
8. If you want to turn the horse into a unicorn, cut 2 small horns from the construction paper and glue them to the head.
9. Now you are going to attach the horse to “stand” on the larger white center cloud.
Fold small tabs at the bottom of each of the 4 horse feet (er, hooves) and glue them down to the card. You might find that double sided tape works better than glue for this… feel free to use whichever method you want.
10. Outline the white cloud base using glue and then sprinkle on some glitter. (Or if you are using glitter glue, outline the cloud shape with that.) Allow the card to sit open while all of the glue dries.
11. After the glue has dried completely, fold it up and it is ready to give to the recipient!
So cute!!
If you decide to give this DIY pop up card craft a try, be sure to let us know how it turned out! If you post a picture of it on social media, feel free to tag us. We love seeing our crafts “in action.”
While you’re here, take a few minutes and browse the rest of our DIY content.
