Light-up Christmas Cards

Hello and Merry Christmas!

I wanted to share an activity my lab did in partnership with the Dr. Hector P. Garcia Memorial Library for their community Christmas event this year! We did a booth with light-up cards, where kids could come and color in a design of their choice, then light it up! This was something my sister helped me design and put together, so she is featured here as well. The baby yoda wrapping paper in the header was just a personal touch ;)

I hope you enjoy making this! I included some tips at the end for how to design your own.

To put together the cards:

• Printouts of the cards (attached)
• LEDs (link)
• 3V coin cell batteries
• Copper tape (link)
• Scotch tape

To create your own, all of the above plus:

• Scissors (optional)
• Pen/pencil
• Scratch paper (I used holiday-themed cardstock, but printer paper will work)

To color in the card (optional):

• Crayons
• Markers
• Colored pencils

I didn't include images for this, but you should start by coloring in the card design! It will be easier to do that at this step than if you assemble it first and then color it in. Enjoy the process and let your creativity soar!

I will be using the reindeer card to explain the process, but it will be (mostly) the same for each of them!

The first thing you will want to do after coloring it in is fold the paper in half "hamburger style," with the coloring images facing out. Once folded, on one side you should see the front/back of the card, and on the other the large "Merry Christmas" design.

You should make another fold to make it take on the card shape. With the fold you already have still in place, make another "hamburger style" fold, with the front design and back design on the outside. You should be able to open it up and see the "Merry Christmas" design on the inside. Now, it should look like the image in this step, just without the LED.

You should then open up the card to see the inner part. This includes a diagram for my suggested way of placing the copper tape, LED(s), and battery. I've made notes on the images in this instructable to explain each of the small parts!

The next fold you will want to do in this step is for the battery. On the bottom right corner of the diagram, you will see two circles, one with a positive (+) sign, and one with a negative (-) sign. Take that small corner, and then try your best to align the circles over each other, and make a fold. This will act like a button and should align with the "hold me" circle on the opposite side. This will be the pocket where the battery goes.

And that's all for this step! The folds are mainly there to start to add structure. If you find that you are having trouble with this, try adding the copper tape first and come back to it.

Note: there are only multiple LEDs on the gingerbread design. you could modify any of them to have more if you want!

I used copper tape to make sure that the overall design is flat and looks like a card! If you have never used it before, copper tape is a conductive material that acts like a wire, but can stick to paper and other craft materials. Typically, only the top (non-sticky) part is conductive, so the less tears you have in the circuit the better. Sometimes the sticky part can be conductive, so I recommend that you use something where it is. That makes it easier for people who haven't done these circuits, so you don't have to keep redoing things.

For our circuit, we use three strips of copper tape, which you should try to lay across the dotted lines (like in the images). There is a corner in every one of the designs, and in the reindeer one it is in the upper right (this is noted on the image itself). The corner is where two copper tape strips meet, and could be a place where the connection is weak. To help with this, I place a small piece of copper tape on top of that connection.

Best practice for laying copper tape is actually to try to fold the tape where there is a turn, so that the connection is continuous and it doesn't matter as much if the sticky side is conductive. I'm linking a tutorial on this here, if you would like to try this method instead! I chose to prioritize the non-folding method just because I was going to be doing these cards with younger kids, and that can be a bit harder for them. The tutorial is also a great way to see all the different uses of copper tape in paper circuits!

For the last part, you will add the LED(s) and the battery to complete the circuit!

Unless they are brand new, I would recommend testing the LED/battery combo to make sure they work before putting it into the circuit. I put a suggested method in the troubleshooting section below!

To add the LED, I poked it through the front where I wanted it to show through. Once through, I bent the legs so that they touched the copper tape on the appropriate side (there are notes where the long and short sides should go). Once you do this, you then add in the battery to where you made the corner pocket, and it should start working! Tape down the battery and the legs of the LEDs to make sure the card lasts.

This step requires a lot of potential troubleshooting, so I have included some tips below!

Troubleshooting tips:

Testing the LED and battery

The simplest way to do this is to connect the LED directly to the battery. You can do this by touching the long leg (positive leg) to the positive side (with a plus + sign on it) of the battery, and the short leg (negative side) to the negative side of the battery (there are no markings on that side). If the LED lights up, both work!

If it doesn't, grab a second LED and battery. Connect the new LED to the old battery-- if it works, that means the old LED is broken and you can throw it away. If it doesn't work, try the old LED with the new battery--if this works, that means the old battery is broken and you can throw that away/put it aside.

LED doesn't light up once the circuit is completed (in the suggested order of checking)

1. Check that the legs are making a connection with the copper tape
2. Check that the legs of the LEDs are matched to the right side of the battery
3. a quick fix for this is just flipping the battery over
4. Check that the ends of the copper tape are touching the battery in the pocket
5. feel free to add more tape if it doesn't reach!
6. Make sure that the positive side and negative sides are not touching/crossing over
7. This would be a short circuit, and you would potentially have to replace the LED/battery if this happens
8. Re-test that the battery and LED work
9. If none of the above, try getting some tips from this video!

Once you've gotten it to light up, you are done! Fold the card back up to see what you've created. This is a picture of my sister and me, who helped me put together the cards and help out at the event!

If you're interested in designing your own card that could be lit up with an LED, I wanted to share some tips I learned from designing these.

Find your front image first

I googled coloring pages with specific images in mind, and added them to the front of the card! I used a google doc (attached) and put it in the bottom right quadrant. You could use the word doc and replace it with your own image! Be sure to credit the source of the image on the back.

Making the inner circuit line up with the outside image

In my process, I printed out the design and then marked where I wanted the light inside. I created the rest of the circuit around this, and then scanned it in as the second page!

Trial and error

I went through many iterations of this, so don't be afraid to play around with it! The images are of my first first draft, where I was trying to figure out how I wanted the inner circuit to work!