Go Bananas with Davina

Hello crafty friends! Today I’m sharing a fun and feminine interactive card that I hope you love. I made a tall slimline card with a tower of swinging cute monkeys, stealing bananas from the treetops. Using a handful of products from Heffy Doodle, I was able to create the scene I envisioned.

I had a great piece of textured pink banana filled cardstock that I knew I wanted to use. I also knew that I wanted to use a bright lime green as the accent color, but I didn’t know how I was going to layer it my chimps to get the effect I wanted.

I started by cutting my layers to get an idea of the size. Knowing the cardbase would be 8.5 x 3.5, I trimmed my pink banana paper to 8.25 x 3.25. Then, I cut a sheet of Bristol Smooth Cardstock a half inch smaller 7.75 x 2.75.  Since I had a piece of textured white cardstock on my desk I snuck in one more little layer to frame the top piece.

Next, I stamped out all of the adorable chimps from Chimply the best, and multiple images of the bananas and vines. I decided to die cut the images using the Chimply the Best Dies before I colored anything. That way I wouldn’t waste time coloring until I knew what pieces I was going to use. I played around arranging the images on my smallest layer until I was happy with the layout. Then I cut duplicate pieces from the images that would be in the swinging tower.
I wanted to use clear fishing line, but I was too lazy to find some, so I used simple white sewing thread to make my tower. I sandwiched the thread in between the two die cut shapes, using a tiny piece of tape and clear glue. I slipped each image right up to previous image so that the thread wouldn’t be visible (and it wasn’t clear fishing line), and making sure there was about a 4 inch tail on each end. I glued a clean metal washer to bottom monkey using hot glue. It sticks well, has weight to it, and dries fast! This weight will help my tower sway back and forth.

I carefully colored all of the stamped images using Copic markers and gave them little white dot highlights. Then I used Distress Oxide Inks to blend some ombré pinks for the sky, and greens for the ground. I inked an additional piece of Bristol Smooth Cardstock in green, for some leaves. I splattered both pieces with clean water, and white & black inks. Once dry, I cut leaves from the green paper using The Amazonian Leaves Dies. 

Leaving space at the bottom for a sentiment banner, I created a visual ground by adding the leaves about 1.5 inches from the bottom. I also added leaves to the top for the jungle treetops and trimmed off any overhanging stem. Then I artfully layered the two vines at a crisscross, intentionally extending the vines to where the pink banana paper would reach.

Now for the fun stuff! I used a paper piercer to poke a small hole in the center above the vine. Then I ran the thread through the hole and pulled it from behind. I secured it with a piece of scotch tape. I did the same thing toward the bottom where my last banana would rest, and secured that as well. I built up a pile of bananas to reach where the bottom hole was.  Making sure to only add adhesive toward the bottom of that top bunch of bananas, so that my tower could sway freely. I mounted the bottom chimps on some foam tape and also a skinny banner on foam tape. I used a birthday stamp from Classic Sentiments, and the skinny banner from Tag Along Dies.

I finished this off by adding some glittery light pink stars from the stamp set and mounting all of my layers together with Scor tape. I love the results, and really feel like for the past year, pink and lime green have been my favorite color combo. Thank you so much for stopping by and I hope to see you make a swaying swinging scene soon!
Davina