Fun With Shaker Cards

I am really late getting this post up on my blog for the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog which is "Shake It Up" for this week.  Tomorrow will be a whole new challenge so you see what I mean about being behind....

I have some beautiful gold foiled papers that came from Hobby Lobby this past winter and I purchased the entire pad for about $12.00 with a 40% off coupon. There are a few pastels, some grey, and some other bright colors like Orange, Pink and Blue. I wish there were some Red and Purple, but I like this pad a lot and it can make for some quick cards.  I'm going to make some birthday cards for my daughter sometime in the next few weeks.  With two of her boys being pre-school and grade school age, this is what she uses the most. However, some of the colors in this collection make me think of spring which is just around the corner (I hope).

This mint & gold polka dot pattern is definitely one that makes me think of Spring and Easter. Just in case you thought Spring was right around the corner, today is cold and 45 degrees.  It was gorgeous last week in Dallas so it's a bit of a jolt back to reality now that I'm back home.

Shaker cards seem to be my biggest personal challenge. I've tried using my fuse tool but that just hasn't been a big help to me. I got mine on a 50% Off Black Friday Deal so I only paid about $12.50 for it, but I thought it would be a bigger help than it is. In fact, I had another card nearly completed earlier today and ruined it just as I was attempting to adhere the front panel to a card base.  I don't have very many mint colored sequins so I took that card apart to salvage them. I know, I'm a goof ball, *Ü*.  Rather than using clear window plastic, I really like the soft look of vellum over the shaker part.  It took me a while to figure out how to create my shaker but I hope it won't be as hard the next time. After I messed up the first one, the 2nd one came together much faster.

I started this card by cutting the mint foiled paper with a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle in the largest size.  I would have liked to use the foiled paper for the entire card, but it is too thin. Next time, I might try adhering the whole thing onto a plain white card base but I'll save that for another day.  I taped the two largest Simon Says Stamp Stitched Circle Dies together before die cutting the gold foil.  I cut another of these from Fun Foam.  The fun foam gives just enough height to the shaker window to allow the sequins and beads to move around.  I only needed the rings, but I saved the inside circles to use on another project.  For the vellum part I wanted a circle that was slightly larger than the opening so I cut one using the Memory Box Stitched Circles.  The difference is that the Simon Dies have the stitching on both sides of the cutting line and the Memory Box Dies are only on the inside of the cutting line.  They do seem to fit the in between size for when you use two of the Simon Dies together. I don't feel like I am explaining that very well, but I hope you get the idea.  I glued the vellum layer directly to the gold foiled ring then glued the fun foam ring to the vellum using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.

Next, I put the mint and gold sequins onto the vellum inside of the ring and made sure that they were facing the right way (face up if you're looking through the vellum from the front).  I had to use my EK Success Tweezers to do this and then added some gold seed beads to it.  This makes for a great and fun shaker card that's an auditory as well as visual experience.  I cut the Sending Die and the Hugs from the Big Hugs Die using some of the foiled cardstock scraps as well as the Memory Box Snowflake Love Pendant and a single cut of the Simon Says Stamp Mini Hearts Die. There are 9 little hearts in that set and I always save any extras for other projects.  Kristina Werner designed both of these word dies so the fonts match if you're into that kind of thing like I am.  Sometimes I can use different fonts but if I have matching, that is what I want 99% of the time.

I wanted to make a circle shaped window to go with the polka dots of the paper and the circles from the sequins.  And you can't send hugs without a little love too, so I also used heart shapes.  I adhered everything using Ranger Multi Medium Matte.  In hindsight, I should mention that it would have been much easier to attach the shaker window to the base panel if I would have used the negative as my place holder.  I hope I remember that next time as it was a bit tricky to place it since I couldn't just flip the whole thing over to look. In the end, I think the effort was worth it.

Have a great day and thanks so much for stopping by today.  I always love and appreciate comments if you'd like to leave one for me.  Now I better stop talking and get this posted over on the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog link up!