How to Make Easy Cricut Pop up card Templates for Free

This is a tutorial for how to design and make easy Cricut pop up cards for all occasions.

I love pop up cards but I don’t love trying to figure out how to assemble them. Some of them get super complicated with a dozen different pieces that need to be scored, aligned, cut and folded in… I can’t figure out how to even fold them properly much less assemble them in the right order.

Not all pop up cards need to be that complicated. If you want to dedicate yourself designing and perfecting the most intricate pop up card ever, I think that’s great. But for the rest of us who want the wow factor of a pop up but the yay factor of simplicity, I have an easy approach to designing your own text oriented pop up card within your cutting machine graphics editor.

I will be demonstrating this via Cricut Design Space but you can replicate the approach using any graphics editor. It is the easiest way to get free pop up card templates!

So it all started with that Happy Birthday Pop up card available in Circut Access. I gave up altogether with the scoring wheel after 10 minutes and then spent another 5 minutes trying to figure out where and which way to fold the lines. It was cute but confusing.

I decided there had to be an easier way. And there was! Here in this approach, I have a way to take (max) two lines of text and attached them in a way so it pops out from the base of the card. You can then supplement with some additional decorative cutouts with the rest of the card but you can also just leave it plan for a hand written note.

cricut pop up card

You just have to work with a little geometry. (don’t worry, it’s not that bad).

You can actually take any text and make it a pop up. If it has 2 lines, it is even easier. One word or one line text is not bad either. The trickiest part is aligning the top and bottom text such that it touches but still looks good. Not all fonts work well for this. If you haven’t noticed yet, a sure way to get the right look is to use a san serif font in all caps. This is not to say you have to stick to boring text like this, you can always experiment with other fonts but it will just take a little more graphics works.

I will how to set the proportions so that you can turn any sentiment into a pop up card.

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Materials for Cricut simple pop up card

Cardstock – I’d highly recommend medium weight cardstock with colored cores. Here are some of my favorite brands:

  • Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
  • Cricut Joy Insert Card Packs – You don’t have to use these with the Cricut Joy, they are nice material kids for cardmaking.
  • Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte-colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
  • Poptone Assorted Variety Pack – This is the perfect peppy assortment of colors of heavy cardstock. It’s a heavy cardstock assortment with colors I actually use frequently for cardmaking.
  • Seasonal Assorted Variety Pack – This is a slight variation on the Poptone assortment and has a quite few neutrals that complement almost any accent color.
  • Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go-to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.

Glue – The main thing here is to pick a glue that doesn’t warp your paper. Here are some of my favorites:

Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.

Templates – These free pop-up card templates for Cricut cutting machines along with many other pop-up card SVG and printable templates are available for free in my resource library.

How to make pop up cards with Cricut Design Space

As I mentioned earlier, you can do this in any graphics editor. Even word processors and PowerPoint works because the graphics editing involved is so rudimentary, most basic editors will have a sufficient feature set.

Step 1: Start with the text for a happy birthday pop up card template

My recommendation for the easiest designs is to pick a non-cursive san serif font that has thick lines and to type in all caps. This is a great starting font just to practice the concept. Cricut Design Space actually has quite a few of these fonts are that both interesting but not so complex that it doesn’t work for pop-up text.

If you want to write in letters with varying heights, then it is better to pick a cursive or connected font. Depending on the sentiment, they may or may not work using this design approach.

When creating 2 lines of text, use the same text box to ensure both lines are the same height. If you are just doing one line of text, then it doesn’t matter.

cricut pop up card

Step 2: Cricut simple pop up card templates requires the text to be attached

With the text box selected, ungroup your text selection. Then select one of the rows and move it so that the top of the bottom text is touching the base of the top text. You may need to nudge the spacing of the letters ever so slighting laterally to make it attache in such a way that it still looks good.

This particular font I chose actually worked well in all caps and I didn’t have to make additional adjustments.

cricut pop up card

After you’ve repositioned the text to your liking, select all the letters and “weld”.

If you are doing only a single line of text, you will need to make a rectangle that is the same dimensions as your text. You can copy and paste the text dimensions in the “Size” indicator in the top menu panel.

If possible create a box that is the same height as the text but slightly wider than the width of the word. Then weld this box to the top of the one-line text.

cricut pop up card

Step 3: Add a top and bottom rectangle to the text portion of the Cricut pop up card template

Create a rectangle wider than the words. Duplicate this rectangle. This portion of the card will sit flush against the back of the card.

Place one on top of the text and one at the bottom. Center align all the elements.

cricut pop up card templates

Weld all the elements together.

Step 4: Create a base piece for the Cricut pop up card

Check the dimension of your welded piece and create a rectangle the same exact size.

cricut pop up card templates

Now make your card with different colored base and top layer.

I don’t bother with scoring lines for this because everything is symmetrical and you can just align the corners and fold it in half.

You can also use a ruler and a scraper to score by hand.

free pop up card templates for cricut

That’s it! I told you, very little and painless geometry.

Related Articles:

A Simple Spiral Pop up Template for endless free Pop up cards

All Cricut Cards Templates

All Rolled Paper Flower

Easy happy birthday pop up card
Cricut pop up cards free SVG
Cricut Pop up cards SVG

15 thoughts on “How to Make Easy Cricut Pop up card Templates for Free”

  1. Judy Appelbaum

    Thank you, I need to try this. Is there a way to print this information with out all the ads?

    1. Thanks for visiting! You can probably copy and paste the whole article into a text editor and then just delete the ads?

    2. Kerry

      Select reader view where the aA is displayed to the left of the search area.

  2. Judy Appelbaum

    Thank you for getting back to me, I don’t know why I did not think of doing it that way.

  3. Natalie Malue

    What font did you use there?

    1. Hi there, the font in my actual card template is Impact I think. It is part of a standard font suite for most PCs and adobe products. It might even be a google font.

  4. Gay Prewett

    Thank you for sharing these files! I have never tried a pop-up card, but will now that you’ve given such good instructions.

  5. Patricia McCoy

    After I weld my text, I click on “Make It” and when it goes to the continue prompt, it doesn’t allow me to cut. What am I doing wrong?

  6. Deb

    I’ve cut out the template of the “Happy Birthday” pop up card, but now is there a video showing how to assemble it into an actual card? I’m new to this so ….. Thanks in advance.

    1. Elf @DomesticHeights

      Hi Deb – Thank you for the feedback. Ilyssa will be making a tutorial for this soon – watch this space 🙂

  7. SARAH

    i can not find sign up to get password pls

    1. Elf @DomesticHeights

      Hi,
      I see that you are already subscribed to our newsletter. Please check email for details of direct link to log-in 🙂

  8. Alli

    Thank you SO very much for this, I just designed my first SVG after your tutorial! I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us.

    1. Elf @DomesticHeights

      Super!! Congratulations Alli! What a fantastic start to the new year!

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