Not entirely a RoboCard but this is an unofficial official homemade holiday card that Instructables HQ would probably not send to its clients.

It is that time of year where we eagerly await the big guy to deliver the things you have been dreaming about all year. You also made sure that he didn't have to ban you for being naughty. But it's the end of the year and you hope he is still in a good mood.

In the true spirit of Christmas, Hannaukah, Kwanzaa and everything else, nothing brings home the message of crass consumerism at holiday time better than the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. In my take on a homemade holiday greeting card, here's a holiday message to jump start the global economy for a better new year.

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real persons living or dead, robots, droids, or cartoon characters is purely coincidental. Blah, blah, blah...

Step 1: Holiday Trimmings...

This project should really only give you a basis of how to create a homemade card. You should make the card so it reflects your individual tastes and sensibilities. This is a simple papercraft project that only requires:

- some printed pictures or photos

- portrait picture of your intended ~~victim~~ subject

- various colors of construction paper or cardstock

- glue in any form

- some sticky tape

- scissors or small utility knife

You can use the Instructables theme, use a holiday theme, or anything else you can think of.

Step 2: The Sum Is Greater Than Its Parts...

For the front cover of the card, print out and use a picture that will fill out about half the page when the page is folded in half in landscape mode. You can use a ruler to estimate how large to scale up or down your images before you print.

You can find images of the Instructables Robot here.

Note that this card uses normal sized paper and will be folded in half to create the card. You can also vary the size with different papers.

Fold a sheet of paper or cardstock in half that will be your front and back cover of the card.

Decorate the front and back of your cover. I just used a gluestick to glue and layer on my different pictures and parts of pictures to make a holiday scene.

Use a magic marker to add any fine details that my be missing like shadow lines or to block out edges you might have cut off.

Step 3: A Cut Above...

So, find a picture of a subject that will be animating your holiday greeting. It should be some kind of portrait taken with the face being centered somewhat. Wait, it looks like we have a volunteer...NOT. Oh well, it's a random picture I came across on this site. _{sarcasm only to be attempted by professionals, not intended as any form of stalking}.

On the front of your random picture, find the centerline of the face. Crease and fold the picture along the centerline.

Hopefully the picture is centered exactly. If not, you can adjust the spacing by trimming to fit when it is placed and glued on to the outside cover page.

Cut a horizontal slit following the outline of the mouth.

On the back of the picture, reinforce the area around where the mouth is with several pieces of tape to ensure full coverage.

Step 4: Mouthing Off...

At the cut, fold back both sides of the cut at a 45 degree angle. Crease back and forth to get a sharp fold.

Open the picture. Now push or pull out the point of the newly formed triangular peaks.

At the same time, close the picture so that you can kinda squish it so the peaks will be flattened out between the pages.

You have now created the pop-up part of the card.

Step 5: Start Flapping the Gums...

After you have creased your "mouth", cut out a piece of dark paper or a piece of scrap that has been darkened with marker. Glue or tape this to cover the mouth opening on the back of the picture. It will form the back of the mouth.

You are now ready to glue the picture onto the front and back cover page. Orient the card correctly so it opens up with the picture in its upright position. Line up the folds in the middle of the page and picture.

You can open and close the card to test animate the mouth. It works much better when two hands open and close the card.

Step 6: More Stuff...

Finish decorating the card and put your holiday message here.

Look, this one says:

Buy booK OR ELSe! aWESOmE!

and it has a miniature preview copy of the book...

and to all a good night...