Light Vessel

I thought of wood and metal and felt like I had to come up with some kind of mechanism or device: So let me present the light vessel. It is super complicated and it is still in the process of figuring out what goes where. All advice and suggestions are welcomed! And I apologise if the sketch is not understandable!

So basically you have to imagine a typewriter with lights inside shining out. and when you press on the button a stencil comes up projecting a shadow in the back. the basic structure is made out of a shoe box in here:

so when i push that piece down, the string would pull the stencil heart up. i tried using flashlights for this demo but because of the infinite reflection (physics) that it is designed to create it doesn't work for this project too well:

so I used the traditional candle which allowed the light to be radiated(term confusion) to a single focal point:

as you can see the heart shadow is much clearer and here is how it would look like when the button is not pressed

obviously there is much more to the mechanism but this is just the general overview! I am also looking to build a basic circuit in the most efficient way- will also consider light filters? Again, I am open to any comments or suggestions! A few footnotes: the heart shape is just an example I want to put words in the final presentation and also add a bottom layer (if you somehow managed to decode my sketch..) :) See you all tomorrow morning!