Valentine Day pop-up card with LED

The dread of finding the perfect card with the perfect picture expressing the perfect sentiment for a completely contrived holiday made up for the purpose of selling cards is matched by the dread of receiving one insouciantly picked up from the grocery store where often the best cards are found.

I'm here to help you make a pop-up card for you to give somebody. I'm here to help you discover your inner creative streak, and tap that bitch, I meant to say tap into your inner creativity, that's what I meant. I will show you step by step what I do, what works for me, what I get away with, what charms the pants right off people and executed so abruptly and crudely you'll go, "I can do better than that."

Apparently light emitting diodes originated in rocks. Or crystals in rocks with special properties when touched with electricity. That is irrelevant to our card but I found it interesting.

5mm LED -- eBay.

2032 3V batteries -- eBay

ream card stock, 250 sheets, 110LB -- Amazon

Glue

Ruler

Paint, either watercolor children's set or acrylic. 

tape

You have half a month to knock out a card. There are two things going on here, either one would make a decent card on its own or multiplied but they are combined here for added pop-uppery fun and for increased depth because we abhor flatness. Nothing actually pops up, rather a heart-shaped platform fails to fall down and two arms arc across the page for 45˚ but they do not actually lift off the page. You will see it is all tricks. 

No soldering. It would be better more solid all around with wires and solder but instead to keep this simple an arm will shove the battery between the anode and the cathode wires.  The arrangement forgoes a current-controlling resistor. It's a card after all, not an heirloom toy.

A paper band is created to set across the central fold of the card.

The band will be formed into a step.

The paper band is in the shape of a step when the card is half opened.

The paper band is flat when the card is fully opened.

Two crimps will be dented into the step.

The crimps close inward and open flatly with the band. The movement in the crimps made by opening/closing the card powers the arms that move paper hearts and a battery.

The grid on the board is used to mark off the paper band. The lines are scored.

The arm holding the battery is a double arm. The tape holds only the very edge of the battery on both sides. The light is fixed firmly in place.

Opened half way. ↑

Opened fully. ↓

The white circle is reflection from the battery. ↓

So there's that.

It would work by itself. Stick it in an envelope, bang, there it is. Write something on it like how hot she is, especially when she's cooking. You know, something from the heart.

Instead of shoving a battery between two wires, that could be a mouse popping up from behind a chair, or with the cut reversed an arm presenting flowers. Obviously it needn't be hearts, it can be anything you want to slide up or out. Impressive things are possible with two arms like this, I've used this same mechanism to produce very convincing coiling snakes. 

The following technique is a table. 

The table relies on I-beams made of paper. Those can be mass produced and cut to fit at will. The table need not be solid as here, it can have cutouts, it can be made of lacy top material like leaves so that there are more holes than there is paper. No matter how complete the table, the idea is the same. Tables can be stacked similar to the early multiple-wing aircraft.

Glue applied to the center 1/6, and folded in half. folded end cut so all edges are loose. The central third is doubled with flaps for top and bottom, right and left of a crease, or just flat on a page as the end I-beams are.

Upright I-beam, double upright portion for double strength, both top flaps glued, bottom flaps unglued.

All I-beams are rigidly parallel or it will not work.

This is the cover for the card. As you can see I am a regular poet. It is doubtful you can improve on this touching sentiment but you can try.

This is the background for my card. As you can see it is carefully designed to evoke the love one feels in one's heart, all that blood pumping around back and forth, pulmonary and respiratory and circulatory activities happening all at once, and feeling a bit British besides. Shut up, it's art. Maybe you're thinking you can do better than this and maybe you had just try.

The bottoms of the I-beams are glued in the closed position.

This is the finished inside of the card. The light comes on behind the heart. 

It will stand up straight. If you press on the table it will collapse to either the right or the left, for the most part it stands up. The table is a fantastic mechanism that can be used for  thousands of things. I like making a table of a picture of my hand, include a raisin and a bean and say, "you are the raisin for my very bean." The 'flip out' fish is another table. The table is used sometimes to make a forest floor, or a box type view.