Articulated or 'push pull' basics help please
 

When I was a child I remember some children's books had tabs on some of the pages, which if you pulled and pushed them they made certain parts of the page move. I understand that for card making they are called 'articulated' cards.

Does anyone have any idea how these types of cards are constructed? The basic design process.I really want to have a go at some, I love interactive cards and making these would open up a whole new world of fun for the recipients.

The only one I have found is on Martha Stewarts page, but its so long winded and slow I cannot get to grips with it, its a video, I'd rather have pictures to look at so I can look at them and work it out myself.

Many thanks
Janet

I had seen a few websites that were geared to pop-up cards that had some examples of the type of cards your looking for. Most of them use pivots and slots to make the elements move. One I can't find again that I particularly liked was two kids on a teeter-totter. If you google pop-up cards, you will probably find some information on the articulated cards, or even if you google "articulated cards" I'm sure you'll come up with something.

You'll have to search the blog a bit but there are some great ideas in here - Extreme Cards and Papercrafting
I got a good book on paper engineering from Amazon a few years back and found it very helpful. I've used several of the techniques in card-making.
I'd also expect that you might get good results looking for interactive scrapbook designs.

Pull tab mechanical cards
 

This type of mechanism is covered in depth by both Rob Ives (see his book here: Paper Engineering & Pop-Ups for Dummies - Google Books) and Duncan Birmingham (his new book is just out in Europe--I highly recommend it and it's available from Book Depository).

There are so many different variations that it's hard to give advice on how to make them. Feel free to email me if you have something specific in mind--I probably know how to make it.

Carol
Extreme Cards and Papercrafting

P.S. Try the search term "mechanical card"

Thanks everyone for your responses.
Carol, I already follow your blog and have used your pop up piano design as the base for my pop-up synthesizer card. I followed up a few weeks back to Duncan Birmingham, from your Blog, rather a pricey book unfortunately :o(
As Sabrina says, its the pivoting mechanism that I am looking for really.
I am also looking into making cards with an LED...a bit like the musical cards you can buy, but with a light instead of sound. There seems to be more info on that than mechanical cards on the net.
I'd buy a book, as suggested, but really I need to look through first to make sure it has what I am looking for in it.

If you go to the Google books link for Rob Ives book and scroll down to page 100 you will be at the section of pull tabs.

...and the Birmingham book is available on Amazon for preview. Start with page 132.