3d Birthday Cake Card

It has been a while since we made our original Pop Up Birthday Cake Card – it continues to be one of my favourite birthday pop ups, with a fun mechanism that allows the cake to pop up. Today, I decided to create a new version of the 3d Birthday Cake Card – one that combines my love for cute Kawaii animals AND pop ups! Our 3d Bear Cake Card or the second version of the 3d Dog and Birthday Gift Card. They are really the same craft – just decorate slightly differently!

This lovely duo of 3d Birthday Gift Cards can easily be customised to suit your pet friends. Come make these Pop-up Cards with us today!

Disclaimer: This post was originally shared as part of Workshop Week 2024! This was an amazig FREE week of creative tutorials – where a number of us crafty so and so have came together to create an amazing PROGRAM of arts and crafts projects. It is now freely available to all Red Ted Art Readers as per the Workshop Week T&Cs.

To make this 3d Birthday Cake Card/ 3d Birthday Gift Card – you will need

• Some card stock for the card itself (we used A5 to fold into an A6 card)
• Paper scraps in a variety of colors – you could JUST use printer paper and color it in using marker pens if you don’t have access to lots of colored paper!
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Optional: whole punch for confetti

As with many of my crafts, you do NOT NEED a template, but I have created a template for those of you that wish to use one! You can access this for free in my Gumroad Store – simply add the discount code ILoveCrafts at check out and get 100% off! Or grab the FULL set of worksheet instructions plus templates in my Teacher’s Pay Teacher’s Store! Perfect for using in the classroom or at an arts and crafts event!

How to make a Pop Up Birthday Cake & Friends Card

You can watch our pop up card video tutorial or you can follow the written step by step instructions below!

Step by Step Photo Instructions:

How to make a 3d Birthday Card with Cake, Gifts and Animal Friends

Begin by designing what kind of animal friend you would like! Will you be making a bear today, a pop up dog card or maybe a bunny friend?

The printable provided includes printable worksheets to use in the classroom, as well as template for a Pop Up Bear Card and basic cake shapes. The bear shapes can easily be adapted for other animals – by changing details such as the ears or adding a tail etc. But as with all my crafts, I do encourage you give creating your own characters and details a go!

Cut out your pop up birthdard shapes

I always start with the pop up gift/ cake. It is basically the width of a ruler and the runs the “length of the your cardboard stock”. Then sketch out some shapes for your pop up bear you will need:

• An oval for the head and the same again for the body (our head and body are the same size – the image shows different sizes, I changed my mind!)
• Some small circular ears
• A little oval snout
• Four hands and feet (a little larger than the ears)
• If making a 3d Birthday Cake – some candles
• If making a 3d Pop Up card – some bows (not included in the printable)
• OPTIONAL: balloons or confetti – but you can think about these at the end
• OPTIONAL: speech bubbles with cute animal related puns – I love you Bear-y much etc

Make the 3d birthday gift/ 3d birthday cake

Take your strip of “cake” or “gift” paper. Fold it in half. Make a neat crease. Fold it in half again. You should roughly have a square.

Open it up. And fold the two back sides – one of the creases will be in the wrong direction – so you make a little box (see image). Neaten the creases.

Decorate the birthday pop up

Decorate the two central segments to look like a cake or a gift. I cut a strip of pattern paper to fit the width and gave it a wiggly line. I also added some jam to the middle of the cake with a pink felt tip pen!

Cut out paper candles or a paper bow. Make them a little longer than needed, as you will need to the extra length for gluing.

Glue to the back of the cake.

Assemble and decorate the paper bear or paper animal

Now it is time to assemble your paper animal friend. In this case, we glue to ears to the back of the bear’s head. Note – that positioning the ears will give you different “looks”. Experiment with how far apart or close together you glue them.

Add the snout and eyes.

Draw claws and paws to your bear’s hands and feet.

The great thing about making your bear in this way is – that if you make a “mistake” you can simply cut out another shape and replace them! This is when I decided the bear’s body should be a little bigger and changed it to oval as per the template!

Assembling your 3d Birthday Card

Now it is time to bring all your paper cut outs together.

Begin by carefully gluing down’t the bear’s head, body and feet (NOT the paws).

Fold the card in half and carefully crease these shapes to fit the card.

Add glue to both segments 1 and 4 of your cake/ gift.

Aline one segment with the central spine of the card and secure.

Fold over the cake/ gift and secure the other end.

Add the paws to the outside of the cake.

Your basic pop up birthday card with cake or gifts is now FINISHED!

Add embellishments or finshing touches

Now you can add your finishing touches. We added some paper balloons (one cut out shape is included in the template) and hole punch confetti. But you may also wish to draw and write some speeach bubbles and glue those in too.

And finished! Isn’t this 3d Birthday Card fun!! My kids especially love making and sticking down the confetti. So easy and fun.. and really effective!

How to turn your Birthday Cake Pop Up Card into any Animal Pop Up

Our instructions today, showed you how to make a basic Birthday Pop Up Cards + provides you a template for the Bear Pop Up Cake Card. But here is are the examples of how quickly and easily you can vary these cards to make lots of different animal pop-up cards for Birthdays and other celebrations:

First up – see how easy the panda bear and bunny cards are? With the bunny, you will need to fold the ears and position the bunny a little lower down to accomodate the ears!

And here some cute dog birthday cards – I LOVE the Pug Pop-Up Card, but the generic emoji Puppy Birthday Card is adorable too! As you can see in the illustration, simply switch out the colors for the body, hand and feet as required!

Here are some fun animal puns you may wish to include as greetings:

Once you have made your fun cards.. it is time to add your messages either to the inside of the card or the outside! I love write paper speech bubbles and adding them to either location.

Birthday Bear Puns:

• I love you bear-y much
• Have a bear-y good day
• Happy BEAR-thday

Birthday Dog Puns:

• Have a PAW-some birthday
• Happy BARK-Day
• It’s PAW-ty time
• Hot diggity dog, it’s your birthday!

Birthday Cat Puns:

• Have a PURRRR-fect Birthday
• Have a Paw-some Birthday
• Have a MEOW-some Birthday
• Have a CLAW-some Day

Birthday Bunny Puns:

• Have a HOPPY Birthday
• No-Bunny Compares to you
• Not another grey hare (make a grey bunny!)
• Some-Bunny Told me it’s your birthday

Hope you have fun making these pop-up Greeting Cards for loved ones on their birthday! So fun! Though we made these as birthday cards, you can of course use them for other occasions, such as Valentines cards or Christmas Cards too. Simply adjust the colour schemes to the different holidays and add different confetti or sticker designs. E.g. hearts for Valentine’s and snowflakes for Christmas!

As you know, we have many many many more Pop-Up Birthday Cards here on Red Ted Art. Just to highlight some of our favourite.

• The “original” Pop Up Birthday Cake Card (this works really well as a wedding cake card too)
• Adorable Pop Up Bear (also with balloons and confetti) (Templates available)

• Pop Up Heart Card with Bear or Cat (bear template available)
• Fun with Pop Up Monster Cards (templates available)

See all our Handmade Birthday Cards here – lots of different card tutorials with a varity of pop-up mechanisms for you to try out: