The stamp sticker sheet for the Tiny Travel Guide to St. Louis
US-based non-profit organization, The Movable Book Society (MBS), has inducted Filipino artist-entrepreneur Amy Lopez Nayve as its youngest and lone international board member during its recent biennial conference in St. Louis, Missouri. MBS is composed of pop-up book artists, producers, and collectors,
As the first Filipino paper engineer to gain international recognition for her work, 29-year-old Nayve’s mission is to pioneer the Philippine paper engineering industry and inspire the next generation of paper engineers.
She is part of the 2024 SHE Fellowship, a prestigious eight-month leadership and crowdfunding program by think tank Sasakawa Peace Foundation and community platform The Spark Project. She bagged the Trailblazing Creative Disruptor prize at the Benilde Alumni Technopreneur Awards.
Tiny Travel Guide to St. Louis by Filipino paper engineer Amy Nayve
During the MBS conference, Nayve facilitated the Make-and-Take Workshop, where she designed a passport-sized Tiny Travel Guide to St. Louis which conference-goers may assemble into their own pop-up book. It came with a stamp collection of landmarks and food, a collaborative project among 24 artists from The Fold, 20 of whom are Filipinos.
In a small lecture, Nayve recalled the backlash she received for introducing herself as a paper engineer during her first public workshop. Then, she did not have any published works yet. One message read: “Do not call yourself a paper engineer if you cannot back it up.”
“I showed this to my mom. She said: ‘Do not listen, she is just pumapapel’,” she shared. “In Filipino, pumapapel means someone is trying to make herself look important.”
The Movable Book Society (MBS) Conference
In 2018, MBS recognized her Popfolio, a pop-up portfolio of all the creative pieces she created as an Industrial Design student of De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde (DLS-CSB). One mechanism in the book, which Nayve called “an accidental innovation,” caught the attention of the global organization and earned her an Honorable Mention for the Emerging Paper Engineer Prize.
“I never heard from that gatekeeper again,” Nayve stated. “It would turn out to be almost prophetic because at its core ‘pumapapel’ is about stepping into places where others think you do not belong, and I have been pumapapel all over the place, in so many ways for the past seven years.”
Nayve founded the nation’s first studio specializing in paper engineering, aptly called Pumapapel Pop-Up Design Studio.
“How do you build a business in a country where your industry does not even exist? I had no business background, no network, no wealth. But I had something much better—‘delulu,” she put it.
Being “delulu,” a slang for someone who has beliefs that are not based in reality, allowed Nayve to trust in herself “so hard” so that other people started to believe in her, too. The first company to do so, desktop cutter distributor Silhouette Philippines, gave her Cameo die cutters, which she used for her initial commissions.
“Others could not imagine what pop-ups could be beyond greeting cards and kids’ crafts. So I decided to bet on advertising,” she explained. “I said yes to every opportunity to conduct workshops, school talks, and panel discussions to news features, anywhere someone would listen.”
Nayve remembered how local printers refused to assemble her first projects due to high complexity and low-order quantity. This led her to hold her entire family “hostage,” as she put it. Their kitchen at home became their assembly factory.
“I learned pop-up design is not just about form, but also about lessening room for human errors and production efficiency,” she said. “I made a strategic pivot, away from small batch production and towards one-of-a-kind projects, where the value was in the concept, the design, and the experience.”
These projects include a portable showroom for Nature’s Legacy, a Cebu-based furniture brand showcased in international trade shows. Nayve created a 3D diorama which allowed viewers to feel the eco-materials of the featured furniture pieces.
Next up were four large pop-up artworks for the ASEAN Center for Biodiversity, which encapsulated the wonders of forests, oceans, wetlands, and heritage sites in an interactive and educational spread. These were displayed in its pavilion at the Dubai World Expo.
“I was learning everything on the fly, handling clients, getting prints right, running a business,” she recalled. “I made so many mistakes—I underpriced, I overpromised, I said yes to impossible deadlines, and I people-pleased my way through projects.”
Nayve noted how these early mistakes and lessons became the foundation of her venture’s next chapter. With a growing clientele, which included demands on proposal cards, corporate business cards, light-up giveaways, and other marketing materials, she decided it was time to open doors to fellow creatives—not artists with exhibited pieces in galleries, but freelancers grinding in the artist alleys and through online commissions.
“I wanted to be successful enough to uplift artists the way my family uplifted me,” she stressed. “So, I began building a roster of collaborators I could bring in to contribute their own unique creative voices to the projects I make.”
With this, she was able to provide paid opportunities for artists to exhibit their works and build their portfolios.
However, Nayve stressed being a pioneer came with a heavy responsibility to protect The Fold, the community of freelance creatives and beginning paper engineers and pop-up artists from Southeast Asia and beyond which she founded via the chat application Discord.
“The prices and terms that I accepted would set the precedent so I realized that if I let clients underpay or overwork us like what commonly happens in the local advertising industry, I would be opening the door to exploitation of the artists that I gave opportunities to,” she stated. “I stopped being Ms. Nice Girl. The results: fewer projects but better ones.”
Pumapapel Pop-Up Design Studio now has completed a total of 184 projects, from the first-of-its-kind pop-up menu for Bar.Flora, a Quezon City-based gin and tea bar, to a giant eight-foot-tall pop-up play space for Mind Museum which teaches children about science. Included was a partnership with illustrated books publisher Nextquisite Publishing UK for a carousel book series with illustrator Qian Ling.
Nayve has conducted over 30 workshops, and continues to facilitate guest talks, mentorship calls, and consultations for students who are developing pop-up books for thesis and capstone projects. The National Commission of Culture and the Arts (NCCA) has sent her, with other artists, to equip teachers from underserved communities with artistic skills they can share with pupils.
“If you ask me now: What is pumapapel?” she said. “Pumapapel is speaking up for others and letting their voices be heard.”
“It is stepping into spaces to make room for more people—embracing your role and shining the spotlight on those who stand with you.”
