These are other by-products of our main business. We have to use cut pieces of string and elastic for making up price tags and swing tickets for retail outlets. We use longer pieces of elastic for making up face masks and we use treasury tags as a way to make handles on products such as pop-up handbags and pop-up lanterns for commercial business-to business promotions.
With a bit of luck, that information might have given you a couple of creative ideas that you hadn’t previously considered. However, we realise that you aren’t going to make thousands of masks or thousands of handbags and lanterns so we offer these items to you in packs of small quantities at a low price.

As for cut pieces of string – well who knows why you might use them but if we don’t put them on offer we will never know!

In our main business of manufacturing automatic pop-up products for business-to-business promotions we use thousands of rubber bands each week and that’s why we are able to offer you the chance to buy rubber bands at an attractive price. However, we can supply the bands only by weight as they come to us via our importer in bags weighing 1lb – just under 0.5 kilos. The sizes range from No 32s which stretch from 80mm to 160mm in length down to No 28s which stretch form 40mm to 80mm in length.

It is surprising what can be done with a simple wire spring. It took only a little imagination to utilise a spring in the manufacture of these wobbly bits interactive pop-up cards to transform an everyday object into something memorable and that is exactly what you need for your direct mail promotions. The die-cut feature on the front of the card is what captures the imagination and provides the interaction. However, whilst our examples are fun greeting cards there is nothing to say that the die cut couldn’t be your best selling product. It could easily be a box of breakfast cereal, a spray polish, a bottle of pop, a mountain bike - anything goes with an interactive pop up card such as this.

You will be surprised at how much interest is created by this very simple pop-up engineering device. The wobbly cards will be passed around your customer’s office for everyone to have a wobble. They really are very amusing and highly interactive. Another important point that is well worth considering is that there might be added mileage in a product promotion if you were to plump for a standard greeting card size. These often have the option of matching coloured envelopes at a fraction of the price of regular commercial coloured envelopes. This is an important consideration not only for marketing budgets but also for the added interest and anticipation that a coloured envelope generates in each morning’s stack of business mail. All in all, a card with a wobbly die-cut could provide a fun answer to the tricky problem of trying to find something different for your next promotion.

Card Blanks, Showcards and Struts are available in packs of individual sizes or assorted packs. Each card is made in either 350gsm silk art board, which is acid free and lignin free, or in 500micron box board for rigidity and the packs are presented in poly bags.

The actual V-fold pop-up is created by a die-cut printed piece that is affixed to the left and right of the centrefold. Opening the card creates the lift. However, it is the die-cut which creates the pop-up feature in pop-up print and that can be in virtually any shape that you like. Your best-selling product could be a box of cornflakes, a motor car, a computer or a pair of shoes but pretty well any shape can be die-cut to your custom shape. However, we should make one important point here - simple shapes work the best in pop-up printing. There is no point spending money on a really intricate cutter as it is the lifting action which attracts attention. Our motto in pop-up engineering is - keep it simple, keep it affordable, keep it effective.

The V Fold pop-up allows quite a few variations to create different effects in pop-up printing. For example, the pop-up feature can lean forwards, backwards or it can be upright when the card is fully open. The V fold can be situated at the bottom of the centrefold or towards the top, depending on the effect that you want to create. It can be off-set from the centre to create a lean to the left or the right and there are double V-fold possibilities for more intricate effects. The pop-up cards are usually printed in 4-colour process on 350gsm silk artboard.

The “V-fold” is probably the most common example of pop-up printing and there is a good reason for that. Although the v-fold is a very simple pop-up technique it gives a terrific display with a very dramatic lift. These points are vital in promotional mail as they create focus and impact, drawing your customer’s attention to the focal point of your B2B marketing campaign. The fact that the “V-fold” is a fairly simple mechanism also helps to keep the assembly costs down which will help your pop-up printing budget.

We have just launched our long-awaited pop-up crafts site but Once again we repeat that we do not want to try to compete with well established paper crafts suppliers. We will try to bring you products that go hand in hand with our main business of supplying products made in board to the advertising and marketing agencies of the world but that also offer you an alternative to what’s on offer from the many large specialist crafts websites.

In the process of making specialist pop-up products we are able to produce basic die-cut shapes made in board which you may find to be of use in making your card creations. To launch this range we have included very basic shapes such as circles, ovals, love hearts and stars along with packs of printed letters and numbers.

We also have a small selection of printed die-cut pictures which might be a fun thing to use. However, all products are made of die-cut card and are not to be confused with the vast assortment of paper die-cuts available from main suppliers such as Mad About Cards, Liz’s Crafts, Handy Hippo and Hobbycraft.