Early on, for reason I either can't remember or never knew to begin with, I decided that the primary enclosure for the project needed to be a heart-shaped transparent backpack.

As it goes, I proceeded to hit up the bountiful wonders of Amazon! I thought to myself that this sort of accessory would be a thing; Japanese fashionistas, EDM raver kids, 12-year old girls, all of them would have use for a gummy heart backpack... right?

Nope. You know how it works- the moment you see a need for a specific thing, it seems to vanish from any possible reality where it may have once existed. A heart backpack as I saw it in my mind's eye wasn't to be found in any proximally for me to purchase.

This just meant I'd have to create my own from scratch. Doing so ultimately allows me more control over the attribute of the object anyhow. So instead, I searched for bolts of vinyl fabric. Shiny thin vinyl I was able to find with relative ease.

To avoid sewing the stuff (vinyl is more tedious to stitch than leather), I created a 3D printed frame that the vinyl could rivet onto.

I created a pattern for the three specific pieces of material that needed to fasten together with corresponding holes. Once everything was printed and cut, I used small pieces of raw filament to capture everything in place. Easy.

I even made a second backpack from my pattern in a neon yellow color. So my design is easy to replicate.

The final enclosure isn't soft and collapsible like you'd imagine a backpack aught to be... but- it aesthetically looks the way I imagined and holds its form nicely.

If you're interested in creating your own for any reason, the design is open source. You can find all of the .stl files for printing on my hackaday.io page where there is extensive documentation and instructions on how to do so. Enjoy. ;)

Follow my PULSE Pack Build Instructions on Hackaday.io!