By Sara Barnes – I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by the con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing that goes into pop-up and accordion-fold books. So, when I saw Bozka Rydlewska’s beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions in a 3D form, I was wowed by their beauty and detail.

I had the oppor­tu­nity to ask Bozka a cou­ple of ques­tions about her work. She’s loved pop-up books since child­hood and had always wanted to make one.

“When I fin­ished my series of illus­tra­tions New Botany, I thought it would be inter­est­ing to inter­pret the illus­tra­tions into three-dimensional forms,” she tells me. “At that point I was really tired of work­ing non-stop on the com­puter and eager to do some­thing with my hands.”

To make her pop-up books, she did some research. Bozka read sev­eral man­u­als and also attended a week-long pop-up book course at West Dean Col­lege in Eng­land. Um, I want to take one of those. Sign me up!

So, how long did it take to cre­ate these pieces? “It took me 3 to 4 weeks to make each pop-up. It was a com­pli­cated and time con­sum­ing process — I was work­ing on 1:1 scale mod­els, cut­ting and glu­ing over and over again until the pop-up matched the vision I had in my head,” she explains. “The final pieces were printed on high qual­ity archival paper, cut out by cut­ting plot­ter and assem­bled by hand by myself. The assem­bly of the most com­pli­cated pop-up took 14 hours.”

Totally worth the time spent. They’re beautiful!

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About the contributor

SBarnes_portraitSara Barnes is a Baltimore-based blogger and project planner. Her background is in illustration and fine arts, and she writes for sites like My Modern Met, Beautiful/Decay, and Craftsy. In addition, she runs her own blog called Brown Paper Bag that celebrates beautiful and clever illustrations. It highlights the field in its many changing forms and finds inspiration from illustrators working in ceramics, paper sculpting, tattoos, embroidery, and more!

Sara is obsessed with illustration, crafts, and creative collaborative projects. Recently, she planned and launched the Collage Scrap Exchange, a global paper-scrap swap for collage artists around the world. Follow Sara on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.