Since finding this old fashioned gumball machine I have been trying to figure out what to do with it. I did not want to do the normal thing by filling it with gumballs. For me this was to easy and I wanted to be more creative. So, this is the current thing I have come up with. I have decorated it for Christmas and for Spring now for Fall. This time I also put led tiny lights that is on a timer. It has turned into a fun project to see how many different was I can fill the machine inside. I hope you can find a beautiful gumball machine to decorate inside. I will show you how I went about doing this below.
I have seen a few of these in Flea Markets and you may even find one in the Goodwill or Arch stores. This one is actually a working gumball machine. To take this one apart I had to unscrew the top and disassemble the machine. To keep the decorations from falling down inside the machine I cut a piece of cardboard to fit the opening. I did not glue it down just for the reason I may someday want to put gumballs inside. I decided to put pumpkins and gourds inside the glass dome.
For the Spring decorations I did glue the stuff to the cardboard but made it all removeable. This was a bit harder with the pumpkins and gourds. I actually had to try to just get it to fill the inside of the glass globe. Another complication was dealing with that center pole sticking up in the center. When I lowered down the globe with the pumpkins and gourds I had to keep moving them around with my fingers so I could get them to sit in an eye appealing direction. Did not want them to be sideways or upside down.
It took a lot of adjusting the items inside to get it to look right for me. Now that I have this done I think I could have used flower picks of the season also. Might be easier and you could glue them to the cardboard.
This time I decided to add the tiny LED lights! I love the lights at night on the pumpkins. I wish you luck in finding a gumball machine and hope you have tons of fun with ideas for the inside.
I bought the pumpkins, leaves and the LED lights at Hobby Lobby.