Pop-up Pen Pals: Flashlight Slider Card

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One of my engineery-crafty* friends got a Cricut, so we lately we've been for-real pen pals with analog letters and low-stakes paper crafting projects. 

The first exchange was fairly normal letters (although his was miniature and mine was written on shopping list paper because that's all I have for stationary right now), and then he sent me a foam-and-paper creation with a tab-operated camera iris and a background light, so obviously I had to step up my game.

2020's been a tough year, so that was my theme.




Note: ideally I would have made this out of black or other dark-colored card stock, but I was using what I had on hand, which was white cover stock and black construction paper.

The Process

First the concept sketch, then a very rough prototype from scrap paper for proof of concept (found a design flaw immediately and was able to correct for the second draft). Then I went back and added measurements to the sketchbook page. In hindsight, I should have combined two of these pieces, but I'll make that edit if I decide to make more.



The second prototype had basic functionality but needed fine-tuning (front panel is better as a pocket instead of a sleeve, the arrow cutout was too big and not in the right place). I also discovered where some of my measurements weren't quite right.





Yay, dielines! They can be super annoying, but when everything is exactly the right size and fits together, assembly can be very satisfying.













*Engineery-crafty – a person that lands on the engineering side of crafting. For example, the kind of person that once made a functioning, remote-controlled R2D2 for funsies.

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