Smile

Lawn Fawnatics' Challenge #21 is an inspiration challenge. They posted a mood board, and challenged participants to create a project (using Lawn Fawn products, of course) inspired by the colors, photos, etc. I created this encouragement shaker card to send to Send a Smile 4 Kids. The colors and the bokeh effect in one of the photos inspired me.

I used the "Sweet Smiles" stamp set by Lawn Fawn for my focal point. I stamped the gumball machine & several gumballs onto a scrap of Strathmore Smooth Bristol paper with Versafine Onyx Black ink. I also stamped some of the faces included in the set on the gumballs. I hit the paper with my heat tool a bit, just to make sure the ink was dry & wouldn't smear. Then I colored the images with my Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers, adding in a red Tombow marker for the machine itself. I used a water brush to blend out the colors and add shading.

For the greeting, I used Lawn Fawn's "Owen's ABC's" to spell out "smile." I stamped with Hero Arts Red Royal & Ultra Pink inks, alternating the colors. Then I used a 1/2" circle punch to punch out the letters. I thought this alphabet set went well with the gumball theme of the card.

Before I die cut my gumball machine, I used a craft knife to cut out the center part of the "bowl," to create my shaker window. I then die cut the machine with the coordinating die, and used my 1/2" punch to punch out the gumballs. I cut a piece of vellum with a Lawn Fawn "Large Cross-Stitched Rectangle" die, positioned my gumball machine on that, and traced around where my window would be with a pencil. I cut that out of the vellum panel, and then adhered the machine, some gumballs, and the greeting letters to the vellum.

I cut a piece of red bokeh-patterned paper (from Lawn Fawn, but I don't know the name) with another "Large Cross-Stitched Rectangle" die for my background. I traced the window area through the vellum/gumball machine panel, and cut that out with my craft knife. Then I adhered my vellum panel in place, hiding the adhesive behind the images.

I used the same rectangle die as for the patterned paper to cut 2 pieces of white 2mm-thick craft foam. I traced the opening for the shaker on each piece of foam, and cut it out with scissors, a little larger than the paper opening, so the edges of the foam wouldn't show.

I backed the window in my patterned paper with a piece of transparency, and adhered that panel to my foam pieces, which I adhered together with Scor Tape. To get the best seal between the foam layers around the shaker window, I glued the foam pieces with Ranger Multi Medium Matte, just around the opening. Then I set the panel under some acrylic blocks to let the glue dry thoroughly.

After the glue had dried, I filled the shaker with the remaining gumballs and some pink seed beads. I adhered another piece of transparency over the back to seal in the shaker material. (I got this tip from Nina-Marie Trapani.) After backing the window with a scrap of the red bokeh paper, I used more Scor Tape to adhere my card front to a white A2 card base.

I'm also entering this card in Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "Anything Goes" challenge.