You will love this Hot air balloon spinning card. It is so fun to watch the balloon make loops in the air.

Painting the figures for the interactive card.

The inspiration for this card was my brother George’s name day. And since I have just received some Lawn Fawn stamps, I absolutely had to play with them!

I wanted to make an interactive card because he really likes the interactive cards I am making. 

Since he likes traveling, a card with hot air balloons seemed very apt. 

The whole idea was to have a little elephant and a mouse on a hill to watch the festive hot air balloons. 

To make the key elements of the card, I first stamped the designs I needed for the card, and then die-cut them. Then I proceed to paint them with my markers. 

For the elephants, I used a very light grey color. I also added some pink on the cheeks of the second elephant to make it look cuter.

For the mice, I used a light brown shade. Although I painted both the big mouse and the smaller one with the party hat, I ended up using only the bigger one.  

I didn’t want to add darker shades of grey and brown because I was afraid it would make the card look kinda gloomy. So I chose very light shades. 

If you want to add some shadows all you have to do is let the paper dry and then repaint with the same marker.  

For the hot air balloon, I chose a more colorful palette and painted the balloon with rainbow colors. 

The colors look so vibrant and cheerful and they are perfect for the final look I want to give this card. 

For the smaller balloon, I used the same colors, but I changed the order to make it look a little bit different.  

As for the banners, I used less intense colors but, made sure that they coordinated with the background colors.

 For the first banner I painted, I thought that the colors were getting lost in the background, so I repainted it by changing the order of the markers I used. 

Lastly, I painted the party hats, and my figures are ready to use!     

Create the mechanism for the hot air balloon spinning card.

Secure the dies with washi tape to stay put and run them through your machine. 

Now you have three parts. The card with a hole in the middle, a thin middle circle, and a small circle. 

To make the mechanism I glued double foam tape on the sides of the card and underneath the die cut. 

I also added foam tape on the small circle. Be careful not to add tape from side to side, but leave some space on the edges for the mechanism to move.  

After you glue them on the card base, you can glue the thin middle circle between the card and the small circle, as the background, using craft glue.

Then insert a small coin in the space between the circles. I used a 5-cent euro coin. You can use any thin coin big enough to move on the space between the circles. 

Then add some foam tape on the coin and add the hot air balloon on top of it. Your spinner is now ready! 

Make sure that the balloon spins just fine, otherwise, you might need to add a smaller piece of tape to the coin.

Creating the scene for the card.

To start creating the scene I cut the slope from a piece of green cardstock.

 To make it look like a spring field I splashed some yellow and red paint on it. It really looks like there are poppies and daisies everywhere.     

Materials I used for the hot air balloon spinning card.

To stamp I used the Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad BLACK SOOT Ranger. 

For the grass, I used the Whimsy Stamps GRASS AND CLOUD EDGER Die Set. 

To make the card’s mechanism I cut out the circles using the Sizzix Framelits Die Set 8PK – Circles.  

For the sky and the grass, you can use any blue and green cardstock. I used the blue from The Paper Boutique, the Colour card collection Sunset bouquet, and the green from the Spellbinders’ FERN COLOR ESSENTIALS CARDSTOCK. 

The markers I used to paint my figures are Tombow’s Dual Brush Pen Art Markers.

For the elephant, I used the N89 -Warm Grey 1 and for the cheeks, I used the 850-Light Apricot.

The mouse was painted using the 990- Light Sand color. 

For the hot air balloons, I used the 379-Jade Green, 443-Turquoise, 055-Process Yellow, 873-Coral, 847- Crimson, 620-Lilac, and 026-Yellow Gold.

The colors of the banners are 533-Peacock Blue, 636-Imperial Purple, 665-Purple, 772-Dusty Rose, and 757-Port Red.

Lastly, for the hats, I used the 743-Hot Pink and the 192-Asparagus.

Thank you so much for reading! If you liked this post don’t forget to check out the Embossed Floral Birthday Card I made!