Categories
Cards Celebrations Free Greeting Cards Paper

INTERACTIVE WORKING GUMBALL MACHINE CARD FREE

I was looking for an interactive card to make as I LOVE paper creations that move when I came across a few people making a gumball machine that dispenses candy. YEP, it really worked. So I wanted to make my own card and tried out one of the videos with so-so success. After looking at a few different ways to put this card together, I decided to do my own, so below is what I did and some tips on what worked. I will give instructions for both solid cardstock and the cardstock/foam tape version.

Give some credit!

So before I begin with my own design, I would like to list the places I saw this card.

Material

Here is a list of what you will need to make this card

  • Heavy cardstock 110 pound
  • Decorative Cardstock for gumball machine.
  • Double sided foam tape
  • Double sided sticky tape
  • Glue
  • Acetate for shaker window
  • Candy: mini M&M or Tic Tac
  • Optional chipboard 1/8 inch thick
  • My SVF file or your Circle Dies- 2 in, 1 in, 1/2 inch

Easier Than You Think

Ok, I am going to give quite a bit of detail below and although I hope to be clear in the instruction, you may look at it and think it’s complicated. It’s NOT! The general assembly once everything is cut takes about 15 minutes.

The piece we will use are named for easy reference

Pieces

  1. Gumball Card Base
  2. Guide Mechinism which looks like a rectange and a odd lightbulb shape cut out
  3. Dispensing Mechinism looks like a circle with a wedge shape cut out – PacMan shaped for those of you old enough to remember!
  4. Handle made up of small circles and rectangles
  5. Optional 1/4 inch strips to cut for a tidy finish.
  6. Lid to cover the refilling candy space.
  7. Gumball Machine Body
  8. Greeting Card base
  9. Stopper

Assembly

Gumball Card Base – Cut 1

Working Gumball Machine
Gumball Card Base- the starting point to dispensing candy from a working gumball machine

CUT 1 of the Gumball Card Base

Cut a piece of acetate 4 inches long by 3 inches wide and using double-sided tape/glue, cover the larger (shaker) window.

Glue the acetate to the back of the Gumball Card Base – choose any side to be the back. Glue or double-sided tape can be used and will not show when the card is finished.

Additional information: The size for the Gumball Card Base was taken from the Tiffany Yu version. The size of the Gumball Card Base used in this file is 4 inches by 5.25 inches. I found this Gumball Card Base size to be perfect. I did try using 65-pound cardstock in my trial version but decided on the heavier 110-pound cardstock. All of the various parts are made using 110-pound cardstock with an option to use less cardstock by using a combination of Cardstock, foam tape, and use 1/8 inch chipboard for the inner part of this card. You will need a Cricut Maker to cut the chipboard if you decide to use this material. The size of the circles on this card base is 2 inches, 0.55 inches and 1 inch cut partially for the tray. When I made the file, The position of the window (2 inches) and The mechanism/handle turned out to be crucial in a smooth dispensing of candy.

The various parts of the Gumball Card Base
Card Base GumBall
This is the Gumball Card Base that is used as a base to creates the gumball machine

Inner Mechinism

The inner part of this interactive card has two parts, First is the Guide Mechanism for the candy to move from the window to the Dispensing Mechanism that catches the candy and dispenses it.

Guide Mechanism

Cut 1, 8, or 12 of these depending on what you decide after reading the additional material below.

Foam tape can be used in between the cutout pieces in any fashion you like to bring the inner mechanism to the required 1/4 inch.

Glue the assembled Guide Mechanism to the back of the Gumball Card Base

Option 1: Use 12 pieces of Inner Mechanism cut from 110-pound cardstock. My image below the inner mechanism is not yet glued together. This version does not need anything extra to protect against a sticky edge.

12 layers of cardstock. no edges to cover as none are sticky

Additional information: We need to create a space between the shaker window and the back of the card that will allow the candy to flow smoothly. If the candy is flat, the mini M&M is about 1/4 inch. If it ends up sideways then it needs 1/2 inch.

I used 1/4 inch spacing, and if any went sideways, a little shake fixed the issue. To get this space, I stacked and glued 8 of the inner mechanism and then used 2 layers of foam tape.

You can also get a 1/4 inch space by using all foam tape: Cut one of the inner mechanisms to use as a guide and then put foam tape on all of the solid areas. Don’t go too close to the cutout section in the middle of the Guide Mechanism as you don’t want the candy sticking to the foam. If you decide to use only foam tape, you will have to use a 1/4 strip of paper to cover the sticky edge later on in the assembly or dust the sticky edge with powder to get rid of the stickiness. A 1/4 inch strip to cut is included in the file.

You can also use only cardstock, cut 12 pieces, and glue them together. This will make your card a little heavy, so if you are thinking of mailing it your postage may increase

Option 2: Use 1 piece of Inner Mechanism cut from 110-pound cardstock. Use foam tape to build the space to be 1/4 inch. We will need to use a 1/4 inch strip of paper to cover the inner edge of the inner mechanism so that the candy does not get stuck. with any foam tape use, this strip of paper to cover the sticky edge is needed.

Dispensing Mechanism:

Cut 1,8 or 12 of the Dispensing Mechanism after reading additional information below

Cardstock foam tape: use 1 Dispensing Mechanism cut from cardstock and layer foam to create a 1/4 high object. This is best done as described by Tiffany Yu. Cut 4 1 inch circles and cut in half. Layer on the bottom of Dispensing Mechanism. Cut 2 half circles 1 inch in diameter and fold each piece in half. Layer on the solid wedge area.

Cardstock only: For the Dispensing Mechanism, you can also use only cardstock: cut 10 to 12 of the Dispensing Mechanisms and glue them together to form a 1/4 inch thick object. Cover each side with a solid 1-inch circle.

Insert the assembled Dispensing Mechanism to the back of the Gumball Card Base so that it looks like this below. note that yours will have the additional solid circle covering this Dispensing Mechanism so the wedge will not actually be visible.

Final Assembly of The Card

Gumball Machine

Cut 1 of each

The Gumball machine consists of a gumball base and a circle. These are glued to the front of the card Base

Handle

Cut 8 of the .5 inch circles and 8 of the 1-inch rectangles cut and 1 out of decorative paper

The handle has 2 parts: first is the 8 small circles about .5 inches in diameter that are glued and stacked and then finished off with the rectangular part of the handle made up of 8 pieces of cardstock. Put this through the .55 inch hole in the front and glue it to the Dispensing Mechanism that is at the back

Stopper

The removeable stopper to refill the gumballis simply two pieces of cardstock with foam tape and some string snadwitched between them. The finished thickness should be 1/4 inch.

Greeting Card Base

Greeting Card Base 8.5 by 5.5 folded in half. The entire assembled Dispensing Gumball Machine is adhered to the front of this card. You can stamp a message in the shaker window area so that when the candy is finished, there is a message.

Well, All Done

Once you attach the finished gumball machine, adhear to the front of your greeting card and fill with candy. The stopper prevents the candy from falling out and can be removed to refill.

If you would like the svg file, drop me a note and I will email it to you. The file below is PDF.

For SVG File

Here is a link to my google drive for the SVG file: SVG FILE

Categories
Cards Greeting Cards silhouette design store

Wiper Card and KOKESHI CARDS

From the Silhouette Store by Valerie Foster Design ID #7183

Egads! What is a wiper card and WHAT on earth is a Kokeshi card?

Well, you are in for a pleasant surprise. I was pinning stuff on Pinterest and came across wiper cards tutorial on Youtube.  

I was intrigued! I love any paper projects that has movement in it and this one did.

Basic explanation

When you pull on the sides of the card, there is a piece that pops up. Take a look at the video for a way better feel of how neat this project is.

I looked at the video, made notes and created a digital file so that I can share this with you all. I did find the measurement (slightly different from the video) written out and pinned it to my board, so go take a look if you want to make this but need to cut it all out by hand.

So that takes care of the wiper card part.

What is a Kokeshi card?

The Kokeshi card are cute Japanese doll cards I got on The Silhouette Design Store and I used parts of them in this project.

The project parts

Here is a look at the pieces you will need. This is a mock up on my computer so the actual cardstock I used was blue.

The solid pink is the body of the card. The polka dots are decorative pieces and the grey is the wiper arm.

I cut my card out of  plain blue cardstock. So the two large “pink” pieces are in reality blue below and folded along score lines.

Assemble card

  • Base is cut out
  • Using the measurement given, cut out the white matting for the front and decorative pieces for the side panel mat
  • You can use your own measurements and decorate the front with any measurement of patterned paper you like, there is no one correct way.
This is a modified version of the decorative pieces
This shows the decorative pieces that are in the file
  • Once the front was decorated, I glued the wiper arm piece of the project to the inside of the front of the card.
  • My downloadable file below has a small score line to help line this up.
  • Once the pop up arm is lined up and glued down, attach the back piece so that the “Z” shaped folds are on opposite ends. (see photo at the top of the post with the blue card pieces)
  • Decorate with your choice of images. I will use my card as a “hello” card with the Japanese translation on the back “Konnichiwa”

Pulling the sides allow for the two dolls to disappear inside and pop up again.

As I mentioned, I used the dolls from  KOKESHI CARDS by Valerie Foster Design ID #7183 . This design is for 3 cards so head on over to The Silhouetted Design Store and grab the adorable dolls or any one of thousands of other images that can be used.

Thank you for reading and I hope you get to make this card. Subscribe to my blog as I will keep posing files and ideas.

[wpforms id=”1223″ title=”false” description=”false”]

The PDF file below is for the main body of the card. For decorative parts you can do whatever you like.

This link is for the SVG file to cut using Silhouette or Cricut

Categories
10 minute craft Cards Celebrations Free Greeting Cards Paper Template

Shadow box card in 10 min

Have you seen those awesome shadowbox cards that are 3 dimensional and look like an artist, graphic designer and engineer must have collaborated to make it? Also You can buy these cards for $2.99 and more but why would you when you can make your own?

If you have not see theses cards then you are in for a treat because not only will someone love getting one from you, I will give you the basic template and you can customize as you see fit.

Shadow Box Card

Ok now lets back up a little and give you some ideas of what I am talking about and then we will go into what you need to make these cards. Below is a Christmas Santa card that I made a few years ago. Notice that there are layers and this gives the 3D effect. These cards are called shadowbox or tunnel cards.

Christmas Shadowbox card
Christmas Santa delivering toys

This Santa Card what cut on a Silhouette Cameo Machine, so for those of you who own a machine like this, I will show you how to use my template to make any card you like.

For those of you who don’t own a machine, I will show you how you can still make beautiful tunnel cards, just will a little bit extra work like the one below. This will be a separate post that I will put up later. In the mean time, download the free template and use any pictures or embellishments ….for all you know, you may end up with some tricks to show me!

So, for those of you with machines like Silhouette Cameo and Cricut, the first thing you will need is my template for the card itself. You will need to open the SVG file in Silhouette Studio. see my post here.

If you can’t open SVG files let me know and I will send the studio files.

Now that you have the template, think about what you want the card to be about and spend a few minutes looking for free images on Google. I wanted a beach scene as summer is on the way. Here are some of the images I found. I used the trace feature to trace them and then resized for my card.

In my free template, I included 2 images that looked like “hills” or “clouds” I use these to create different heights for each layer and welded it to my frame. Remember to ungroup the fold lines (dashed lines) before you weld.

Next I arranged my images and welded to card pieces. Below are the pieces cut out and compared to the template with no images welded.

Assemble

  1. To assemble the card bend all the fold lines.
  2. Lay the back piece flat
  3. Glue the tab of inner card so that it is up against the fold line. The tabs of each card is great for spacing if you place them right up against each other.
the inner card is glued so that the tab is up against the fold line
the next layer is glued right up against the edge of the last.
you can see the layers here
This is the back. the tabs have glue on then and we close the large brown piece on top and press down.
Shadow card with beach scene
Shadow Box: summer at the beach

Carolyn

Categories
Celebrations Free Greeting Cards Pop Up Cards

8 Steps to making a Tunnel Card with a Christmas Scene V2.

I made another version of a tunnel card with windows that open and close.

When I made the card and assembled it I realized I need to do a few adjustments, so I will share the steps on how I put the card together, but  the link to download is the  updated version.

First step

First of all, I wanted to have a “cover” for the card that wrapped around it, so this is what I came up with:

  1. A solid back, made from cardstock that is is 100 lb weight, this also has side tabs to stick the panels on.
  2. The bent sides shown here is where I will stick the bookbinding inserts shown in  the next step below.

20161214_140806

Second Step

The bookbinding method I am using is a little different from the first card. This method has 3 mountains and 4 flat spaces.

The card stock is 100 Lb weight and I found it a bit too heavy. I also think that I like the first method in my previous post of attaching and spacing the panels.

As you can see from the photo below, the image on the right is the flat paper with score makes to fold and the image on the left is the folded mountain piece.

it is important is to make sure the mountain parts are very well stuck together.
20161214_140704

Third Step

I added a bit of color to the background piece (Red Card Stock). This was cut on regular cardstock, 50 lb paper.

The two short sides are glued down and so will the bottom edge.

This will form a pocket and allow for an insert. The insert is for writing a greeting.20161214_140850

Fourth Step

The red back piece is stuck first then the window side panels.

The windows in the updated version will be held close with a Christmas bell, for this version it did not cut as expected.

The bookbinding pieces go next.

20161214_142313

Step Five

Start with the 3rd panel, the one with the smallest opening with the stockings and fireplace,

Attache the edge to the closest “mountain ” tab.

Next attach the 2nd panel, the one with the couple on the sofa

Last is the panel with the Christmas tree and gifts.
20161214_143050

Step six

Attach all the panels to the other side in the same order.

It would have been very easy if I had not attached the bindings to the back of the card in step 4!

Insert the roof with Santa stuck in chimney  into our little red pocket.

Step Seven

All attached but not yet complete! Cute right? As you notice, my windows have cutout panels.

Step Eight

You need to write a greeting so here is the prefect spot to place it: this tab has Santa stuck in the chimney…so grab his little foot and give a tug!

Here are the studio 3  files in Dropbox, it is for personal use.

Carolyn.

Like us on Facebook and post your card