Magic Phone

For the phone in Goodnight Moon, I started with this lampshade from IKEA. 

I cut out spaces at the top to provide a resting place for the receiver, cut out a space for the dial (which will later reveal a surprise face), and used a couple layers of duct tape to seal the top. 

 And a view from inside.

 To solidify the receiver cradle I used epoxy putty to fill in along each of the remaining prongs. 

 For the phone's first magic trick I wanted the receiver to jiggle when the phone rang. I used three L-irons and a small machine screw to make this tiny lever. 

 I installed the mini-lever on a small piece of plywood and screwed it into the phone.

 From the top the lever sits below the surface of the tape.

 Then when a string is pulled the L-iron pops up just enough to make the receiver jump a bit.

From below you can see that when you pull the string, the L-Iron pivots to pop up and stretches the spring

 When the string is released the spring pulls the L-Iron back into it's resting position.

For the phone's second trick, we wanted a face to be revealed when the phone spoke to bunny. 

 In resting position, all we see through the hole I cut is a standard phone dial.

 When a string is pulled from backstage the phone's face is revealed (I later changed the face to be much cuter than the one pictured here, which I was not at all happy with). In this picture you can see the springs that pull the panel with the dial on it back up when the string is released.

 This picture (awkwardly) shows how the panel with the dial painted on it disappears down below the phone, into a hole cut into the little bedside dresser.

And here is a view from above, looking down past the springs into the hole.
This project required a good deal of futzing to get to a point where the dial panel didn't get caught on anything on the way back up, and the string moved easily without friction from where the backstage crew was operating it. It also required a lot of rehearsal because the person who is pulling the strings backstage can't see what they are doing.*fingers crossed* it seems to be working well now.