Cake n’ Shake

Almost the middle of July (how?), so that means it’s time to get the thinking cap on and come up with an idea for a birthday card for my other half.

Three out of the last four years I have made something with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme — the silhouette, an interocitor, and the creature from the black lagoon. It’s one of his favourite shows and there is an absolute wealth of inspiration to draw on. The biggest problem is picking a starting point.

Some random browsing left me with the vague idea of creating a slider card with a pull tab and maybe something to do with cake…?

Some more focused searching led me to episode 507 “I accuse my parents”, where the Invention Exchange host segment included “Cake n’ Shake, a cake mix with a real live dancer” and there’s a shot of the dancer’s hand reaching out the top of the cake. Perfect. Now all I had to do was draw the cake and, more problematically, the hand.

By using the technique of “not thinking about it too much before doing it”, I somehow managed to draw a passable hand of the right size. Then I coloured it with my Copic markers and fussy cut it out.

I wanted the cake to be as close to the original as possible so I printed out a screen capture and traced the rough outline using my lightpad. I added texture paste over the top: thick enough to give that frosted look, but thin enough that I could still see the pencil lines. Once that was dry, I fussy cut the cake, added colour and shading by sponging on acrylic paint, and finally painted on the stripes.

For the background panel, I dry embossed a piece of textured silver card. To tone down the brightness I swiped a black Stazon ink pad over it and polished off the excess ink with a paper towel.

I hadn’t made a pull-tab slider card before so I went looking for some nice clear instructions — I’m really bad at visualising and holding 3D mechanisms in my head — and found this video from Jennifer McGuire which explains it perfectly.

It was also the perfect excuse to get out the Cake and Candles stamp set and — for a change — add a sentiment to the inside of the card. Luckily the lettering style was simple enough that I could extend the sentiment to say “cake n’ shake” (I worry that taking inspiration from a host segment of one episode of the show is a bit obscure, even though my other half is the master of obscure references… we shall see).

It’s not the prettiest card I’ve ever made, but it is most certainly appropriate for the recipient and it makes me smile. And I shall make sure that we have actual cake on his birthday, though I’ll pass on the exotic dancer 🙂

Supplies:

• stamps:
  Avery Elle – cake & candles
• dies:
  Clearly Besotted – tag along
• Copic markers:
  hand – E00, E21, V20
  shirt cuff – W00, W1, W3
• inks:
  Stazon – jet black
  Ranger archival – jet black
• pens:
  Copic multiliner 0.5
• embossing folders:
  Tim Holtz – foundry
• texture:
  Finnabair paper texture paste
• colour:
  Golden fluid acrylics – titanium white, yellow oxide, ultramarine blue, pyrrole red
• paper and card:
  Neenah solar white 216gsm
  Papermill Direct – luxury artist watercolour paper
  Papermill Direct – silver sandgrain
  Hunkydory Adorable Scorable – black
• miscellaneous:
  foam tape
  My Favorite Things – slider elements