Here are some pictures of the pull tab mechanism I tried for the waving paper doll card. In the end it was a big fail. I never did get the pull tab to work to my satisfaction.
It's a double version of a linkage from Rob Ives' book, Paper Engineering and Pop Ups for Dummies.
You can see a picture of the linkage here.
I originally tried the mechanism with these T-shaped linkages.
I didn't like the angle of the arms and legs so I switched to a tilted T.
The red piece is the push/pull tab. When the tab is pushed up and down the yellow and blue linkage strips move the arms and legs.
I thought this would work, except I wasn't happy with the way the one arm crashed into the (yellow) linkage.
And the body had to be way too fat to cover up the holes. At this point I cut my losses and made the card without the pull tab.
Extreme Cards and Papercrafting: pop up cards, movable and mechanical cards, digital crafts and unusual papercrafts.