Axolotl Snap-Apart Valentine's Card

Nothing too fancy here. This was a project with my son. He was old enough that anything "romantic" for a Valentine's card was firmly off the table, so instead of hearts and mush we made something fun and flat: a two-dimensional axolotl that snaps apart into pieces and pops back together as a little toy.

He was in a program called GearBots in Abbotsford at the time, and this became one of our projects together. We designed a card with a "bar" at the bottom where each kid could write who it was to and from, then modeled the axolotl so its legs, gills, and tail snap out of the frame and reassemble. His classmates got something they could actually play with instead of tossing in a drawer.

The real project was the time spent designing it together, low-stakes and fun. That it ended with 20+ kids holding a handmade toy instead of a store-bought card was a nice bonus.

The print file is up on MakerWorld for free, so other parents can run off their own batch.

What I learned

• A card that turns into a toy gets played with. A card that is only a card gets tossed in a drawer.
• The time spent designing it together was the project. Keep it low-stakes and fun, and the batch of cards is a bonus.
• If you want to try it, the print file is free. Run off your own batch.

Photos