Big Face Box and St. Martin's Mechanical Lanterns

One of my favorite parts of the tinkering process is incorporating the maker spirit into yearly traditions and daily life. Over the past couple of months I had the chance to test out some fun tinkering ideas to correspond to the holiday season.

First off, I took some inspiration from my book, The Tinkering Workshop and featured artist Yuji Hayashi, by making a ‘Big Face Box’ for a halloween costume. This easy DIY project just uses a string a fairy lights, a plastic Fresnel lens and a big cardboard box.

The effect was amazing and when I took it to a local Halloween party both kids and adults were amazed at the way it magnified their faces. It wasn’t easy to walk around the space for a long period of time but that wasn’t a problem as so many people wanted to try the box and take a photo of themselves with a mightily distorted face.

As well, for past several years I’ve been enjoying the local German holiday of St. Martin’s Day on the 11th of November when kids and families parade through city streets and forest trails hoisting aloft (mostly) homemade lanterns. I see this tradition as a good platform for incorporating some classic tinkering activities while offering a platform for new experiments.

This year I continued exploring the idea of light up automata by starting with a box with parchment paper walls and incorporating a hand crank wire and little arms that lift and lower LEDs. It was a bit tricky to get everything to fit in the box and to figure out the order of operations. But in the end the automata worked well with the crank slider mechanism and created a beautiful light show in the box.

We brought the lantern to the local parade and bonfire to celebrate the unofficial start of the winter season. One challenge was that it can’t really be cranked when carried so maybe next time I would add a motorized automata mechanism with a switch on the handle to turn on the motor.

Incorporating tinkering themes materials and processes to yearly holidays and local traditions can be a great way to explore STEAM ideas either at home or in an educational program. I’m looking forward to more chances for DIY costumes, lanterns and more.