Here’s something totally new from Pop-up Crafts – a selection of automatic 3-D pop-ups ready for you to decorate and interpret in your own special way. These products add an extra dimension to standard pop-up cards and will help to give you even an even greater opportunity for self expression and to show off your card making skills. The first products to be included on our Pop-up Crafts website are our three most popular pop-up shapes – a box, a cube and a pyramid.

Because of the specialist skills and techniques employed in pop-up assembly we have decided to start by offering these products to the card making and scrapbooking world in ready-assembled form ready for you to get to work applying your creative skills. However, we are sure that many of you will want to tackle the assembly yourselves, so we will soon bring out these products in kit form. However, we would like to hear your thoughts on this so why not drop a line to our resident crafts specialist on “Gail’s Page” - an online forum which will be new to Pop-up Crafts later this week.

For years we have been asked, “How come these automatic pop-ups aren’t on retail sale?” The answer lies with storage. A product such as a pop-up cube has to be sent in a compressed, flat condition ready for the pop-up action to surprise the recipient. However, when the cube is flat and the internal rubber band is stretched and ready for action the rubber band slowly starts to lose its elasticity. If the product is stored this way for weeks on end then the cube loses its ability to pop-up. They need to be sent when the product is fresh and new in order to achieve the best results.

Our pop-ups have always been used for business-to-business direct mail. As soon as they are assembled, they are compressed, packed and mailed, arriving at their destination fresh and in fully operational pop-up condition. The only other people who can make automatic rubber band pop-ups in this way are the crafts and card making community.

We will be discussing your requirements with you to see how best to supply our intricate pop-up products. Our resident crafts specialist, Gail Brown, is of the opinion that we should supply pop-ups ready constructed so that all you need to do is to start decorating. However, the more adventurous types might want to tackle to whole thing from scratch. You can let us know via “Gail’s Page” where you can comment on all aspects of this new site.

We have also decided to supply basic die-cut shapes – circles, squares, hearts, ovals, stars and so on – in popular pack quantities and also in variety packs along with other simple craft supplies which we stock as a part of our everyday business of manufacturing pop-up products. These include self adhesive products, strings and elastics, magnetic strips and other items which will be of use when coming up with new ideas.

We do not intend to set up in direct competition the many excellent specialist stockists who have a full compendium of craft supplies but if what you want is made out of card and it is intended to pop-up then we should be on your list of favourite websites.

This is the news that fans of cardmaking, scrap booking, rubber stamping and decoupage have been waiting for - PopupCrafts. Whitney Woods has finally opened a retail site featuring brand new pop-up craft supplies. Now all of you scrapbookers, card makers and stampers worldwide can make automatic pop-up products in your own style. Our range has previously been available only as business-to-business marketing products but now we feel that it is time for all of you highly skilled card making and scrapbooking enthusiasts to be given a chance to show how much you can improve on the efforts of the ad agencies. These new craft supplies will be available only from Whitney Woods. You will not find them on any other website. We will be featuring a new product every month starting with an easy one first - the super funny “Wobbly Bits” card.

The term Pocket Media was born in the 1990s with the introduction of Z Cards which were introduced to the world as a way to present an A4 sheet of information in a format that people would keep hold of rather than throw it away. The first Z Cards were made in Runcorn and though the product was patented, many imitations came onto the market soon afterwards and the whole genre was soon known as printed pocket media. Whilst early examples were credit-card-sized, any printed marketing product up to A6 in size can legitimately be described as pocket media. All it means is that it is pocket sized.

Handbag Media, Wallet Media and Purse Media

Being pocket sized is not the only criteria for a mini printed marketing product. It is equally important that the printed piece can be easily stashed away in a purse, wallet or handbag. It is for that reason that credit card sized products remain the most popular and the terms of printed handbag media, purse media or wallet media could just have easily have been coined as printed pocket media. The main aim is for the printed marketing product to be retained by the recipient and a product that feels neat and chunky in your hand is much more likely to end up in your pocket, purse, wallet or handbag that an A4 sheet.

Don’t waste your marketing budget on useless flyers

How many times have you walked down a busy shopping street and had a promotional leaflet thrust at you by a student trying to earn some spare cash? Three or four steps later and you spot a litter bin. In the leaflet goes and you haven’t even looked at it. What a waste of money, energy, resources and effort!

The same scenario exists at tradeshows and exhibitions and discarded leaflets can be seen littering the aisles and falling from overfull waste bins in every hall. It’s incredible how much money is wasted on tradeshow giveaways of this nature. Maybe in this instance they should be called tradeshow throwaways. We have plenty of alternatives that won’t be thrown away such as has been proven by our Foldilocks Cards and Mini Starbursts.

A tradeshow giveaway has to be compact so that they can be stored easily on your exhibition stand. Compact and chunky is best as these two attributes encourage the tradeshow visitors to keep hold of your printed promotional material. Your potential customer sees printed pocket media as receiving a printed product rather than a throwaway flyer.

The product that started the pocket media revolution was the Z Card as produced in Runcorn from the early 1990s. The product is well-known throughout the world and has been seen in many different guises since its introduction. Basically, it follows a very similar format to a traditional map – a folded paper sheet fastened inside a heavier cover. The broCard from Wakefield is a similar product which is also not unlike a traditional map – except that the Z Card and the broCard are usually only credit-card-sized.

Since the patent on Z Cards expired, lots of printers have jumped on the bandwagon and who are Whitney Woods to buck the trend? Just to be different and to give our product a unique identity, we call our version a Little Big Card.

As far as Whitney Woods is concerned, the Z Card is the original and definitive printed pocket media product. Developed on behalf of an international airline company as a way to distribute A4 literature without it ending up littering the floors of airport lounges, the Z card proved that this handy pocket media product would be retained by the recipient. Since the early 1990s, Z cards have been produced as advertising and marketing tools for a myriad of companies.

The outer cards are printed in 4 colour process on 350gsm card with a gloss laminate finish, whilst the folded inners are printed on 80gsm bond paper. The basic choice is between an 18-panel version and a slightly longer 24-panel version.