When we got the assignment I already knew what I wanted to make. At the beginning of my Physical Computing class I had made a mistake during one of the labs and after thinking about it for a while I thought of something that could make the mistake useful.
Essentially, what I had done was make a circuit and then interfere with it (or shortcircuit).
I then thought that this mistake could be helpful if you needed a light to turn on automatically when something opened (separation) and then turn off when it closed. A little like a refrigerator door.
So I came up with a flashlight for purses/bags. Some already exist but you have to turn them on first in order to use it. Sometimes though you have your hands full or are in a hurry and need to look for something in your bag quickly.
I wanted to make it out of some sort of leather from the beginning just because I wanted it to look a little better than plastics or cardboard so ideally people would wear it on their purses.
The flashlight works, but I'm not too happy with the final look. Trying to cover the circuit with soft materials took very long and requires a lot of patience in order to do it cleanly.
I found with this project that it is easier to prototype on a breadboard first and then put the circuit together.