My youngest needed Valentine cards for school, but didn’t want store bought. I like toy-type cards, and if I can sneak some science in all the better. This line of pursuit led us to create a Thaumatrope, which is a spinning toy invented in the 1800s with two different pictures on each side of a disc. When the disc is spun, the pictures appear to combine. The original thaumatropes used string to suspend the circle, but a similar action can also be achieved with a stick mounted disc, and rolling a stick between two palms is easier than twisting string. My youngest chose the elements to go on the card, and I drew them up in Adobe Illustrator. Pro tip for getting colors right from screen to print: don’t go by screen color. If you want a bright yellow, go into the color picker and make sure that your CMYK color is all Y, with no cyan or magenta. High contrast images work better for this visual trick as well. I printed the images on card stock, and used my laser cutter to cut the circles (so much more precise than my old electric cutter). I used hot glue to secure the paper stick (I used a 6” stick marketed for cake pops), and keep the front and back together.

I like that when the disc spins, the bee and sun are smiling at each other. It came out cute. What wasn’t cute was making 35 of them. Phew.