Gumball Birthday Shaker

Lawn Fawn has a new challenge blog: Lawn Fawnatics. I needed a birthday card for one of my cousins, so created one inspired by the "Birthday" theme of their first challenge.

I began by cutting a piece of Strathmore Smooth Bristol paper to 4.25x5.5". I stamped the gumball machine from Lawn Fawn's "Sweet Smiles" set on the panel in Versafine Onyx Black ink, & clear heat embossed it. I also stamped it on a piece of masking paper, cut it out, and masked off the machine on my panel. I then taped off the bottom portion of my paper with painters tape, and blended Twisted Citron, Squeezed Lemonade, & Carved Pumpkin Distress inks over the top portion to create a gradient. When I'd finished that, I moved the tape to mask off the top portion, and inked the bottom with Gathered Twigs, adding a little Ground Espresso around the edges for shading. It was a bit of a struggle keeping the tape in place to ink with the browns, since the ink was still wet on the top portion. But I persevered, and love the blending I got! :)

After I removed the mask from the gumball machine, I colored it with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers. Then I cut out the globe portion with a craft knife. I also stamped & colored several gumballs, adding faces from "Sweet Smiles." For the "birthday" portion of my greeting, I stamped with Owen's ABCs in Memento Bahama Blue, Delta Emerald Green, Altenew Coral Berry, & Hero Arts Grape Juice and Orange Soda inks. Then I punched those and the gumballs out with a 1/2" circle punch.

I decided where I wanted my "birthday" word to go, and used that to help me position the rest of the greeting. For that, I combined the "have a" & "sweet" words from 2 of the greeting stamps in "Sweet Smiles." I stamped them in Versamark on my background, and heat embossed with Ranger Super Fine Detail White embossing powder.

I cut a piece of scrap packaging plastic to slightly larger than the opening in the gumball machine, and used Scor-Tape to adhere it on the back of my panel. At this point, the background was really bothering me. I decided to pull a confetti stamp from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps' "Birthday Bash" set (discontinued) and stamp in the same inks I'd used for the background. (I did use Mustard Seed over the Squeezed Lemonade band, since the Squeezed Lemonade didn't show up when stamped.) I feel the added texture helped break up the monotony of the plain background. Once I'd done that, I glued down my gumballs. I added the "birthday" letters, positioning them kittywampus so they resemble gumballs as well.

To create my shaker, I added 2 layers of foam tape to the back of my panel. I created a backing panel for behind the shaker window itself by blending the green, yellow, & orange inks on another scrap of bristol paper. I glued 2 of the stamped & colored gumballs I'd created to that, so they would show through the window but not shake around. Then I added 2 more gumballs (making sure to place them face-down so the fronts would show through the window) and some seed beads to the shaker well. I adhered my backing piece in place, added some Scor-Tape to the back of that, and mounted the whole panel to a white A2 card base. Hopefully my cousin will get a kick out of this!