This year, Gannon's classroom is having a contest for Valentine's Boxes! Gannon had four ideas in mind; an angry bird, a robot, a crocodile (where you would put the valentine in through the mouth...yikes), or a gumball machine.
Now...when Gannon said gumball machine we thought that it would be pretty simple. Of course the more we talked about it the more he wanted it to actually function. In his mind, when a classmate put their valentine in, he thought a gumball should come out!
I will admit, it is a CLEVER IDEA...but I am a crafter, not an engineer. :)
We tried to figure it out - getting the entire family in on the discussion, but we couldn't figure out how to control it and I really don't think the teachers would have liked the gum in the classroom either.
So, we settled. I made the spot where you put the money turn (yes, it was an easy way out for me)! A little brad and some foam and I was a "rock star" over here!
We used cardboard pieces to make the main frame and bought a plant saucer for the top and spray painted them with a shiny red. The cardboard frame is stapled to a square wood board at the bottom of the box so it would be sturdy enough to support the weight of the large glass bowl (we couldn't find plastic!) for the gumballs. We hot glued a large wing nut on the top and then used the handy Cricut to cut the "gannon's gumballs" on each side and I designed a SVG cut for the money slot and door (attaching them on with foam). The 10 cent money sign was cut from the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. We used Momenta's metallic paper pad for the silver and one of their rub-on hearts which is placed on the door. The red lid is just sitting on the glass bowl (we used small cork pads to keep it from sliding) so the kids can get gumballs easily.
The photos show the gumballs in a ziplock bag which we used to get this to school! :)
There were so many cute ones in the classroom, I can't wait to see who wins!
