By James Diaz Elements of Pop-Up Book Design - Creative DIY Pop-Up Cards & Paper Engineering for Kids, Adults, and Artists | Perfect for Scrapbooking, Greeting Cards, and Paper Craft Projects

If you are considering purchasing this book, get it while Amazon truly has it in stock - actual availability of this book is spotty at best. When it was out of stock/backordered/available for pre-order, I ordered it only to have the expected delivery pushed back repeatedly. I even called and spoke with an Amazon rep who promised it would actually be sent on the date they claimed - it wasn't and Amazon eventually cancelled the order altogether. The situation was the same with other online sellers of the book - I tried ordering it from other internet booksellers and they did the same thing. I even tried to order it from an Amazon Marketplace seller who listed it in stock only to have them cancel the order because it wasn't available. After months of trying to get this book from ANYWHERE, Amazon finally listed it as being in stock, so I jumped on it.Availability issues aside, I do recommend this book. If you are just looking for a few design ideas, this probably isn't the book for you, but if you are looking to learn the actual mechanics of pop-ups, this is definitely the book to get. Think of this as a construction manual, not a design manual. It gives the ACTUAL pop-ups and a good description of how each each one works. It allows you to see each mechanism at work and to take them apart if necessary. Other books show photos or diagrams of the construction as well as photos of examples of each type of pop-up in use, but do not have the actual pop-ups that this one has. Actually having the pop-ups themselves makes this an indispensable tool. This book is also more complete than others that I have seen - it shows many more types of pop-up mechanisms than any of the others. There is one huge complicated pop-up at the front of the book incorporating most of the different examples into one awesome pop-up page.You can go to the author's website to download the individual pdf pattern files, although I think it would be much more useful if they were included on a cd with the book or if all of the pdf patterns were incorporated into a single .zip file for download. You can print the patterns and cut the mechanisms out by hand, or you can import them into the software for an electronic die-cutter (ie a Pazzles Inspiration, Craft Robo, e-Craft, Silhouette, Gazelle, etc) and let your machine do all the work, which is what I did.Overall, this is an excellent book to get if you are interested in learning to construct different mechanisms to use in pop-up books, cards or scrapbook pages. I do recommend supplementing this book with another one that shows you more design ideas. Despite not showing examples of how each element can be used in different designs, I give this book a 5-star rating. Amazon, however, gets a 1-star rating for horrible customer service with regards to this book.