Sparkle Shaker

This fun and interactive card is a response to three challenges. CAS on Sunday asked for sequins which was a perfect match for Pink and Main‘s shaker challenge. Allsorts Challenge‘s request for frames fit in pretty well too!

I actually started this card without realising it was going to become this card. If you follow our Facebook page you may have seen the colouring practice I was doing. One of those practice sessions resulted in this little unicorn (as well as some of her friends!) I knew I wanted to make a shaker card with her, and when these challenges came up it was the perfect excuse to do so.

With my unicorn ready ahead of time (including a touch of Wink of Stella!), I started by creating the card base. At this point I was completely out of white card suitable for making card bases. I didn’t want to use coloured card though, so I wasn’t sure what to do. Searching through my stash I found this patterned paper in a Christmas craft set and decided it would work nicely. The card has small stars on one side and large on the other. (The lighting when I took the pictures means you can see the big stars through the card!) I scored it and folded it in half so that the small star side would be the outside.

Next I cut my frame. I used some silver card and two different sizes of hexagon framelits. I popped the centre hexagon out to go in my stash of die cut shapes to use on a future project. Then I applied tape runner to the back of the frame and stuck it down onto a piece of acetate. Next I added foam tape to the frame. I doubled up the foam tape so it would be double thickness, but also cut it in half so that it would be narrower. I then used liquid glue to adhere the little unicorn to the front of the window.

At this point I realised I had a problem. The shaker components needed to go into the window, but that would mean pressing the card base directly onto the window, rather than the other way around. Which of course would make lining things up very difficult! As an attempt to solve the problem I drew around the cardbase and positioned the hexagon on the resulting template, so that I would just need to line up the card with my drawn lines in order to get everything stuck in the right place. Good in theory, but it didn’t work perfectly.

Anyway, I went ahead and began filling the window with shaking material. I used quite a lot as I wanted it to be nice and full. I used large silver star sequins, smaller gold stars, silver sequins (the traditional round ones), and a sprinkling of clear/white glitter. I then attached the window to the card base (or the card base to the window, as the case may be!)

The final touch was to add the sentiment. The unicorn came from the Avery Elle’s Be A Unicorn set, which does have some sentiments, but I couldn’t resist using the sparkle sentiment from Avery Elle’s Pixie Dust. It just seemed perfect! I stamped that with Memento Tuxedo Black ink.

I’m very happy with this card! It’s very sparkly, and a lot of fun to shake, which was the idea after all. I would be happier though if I’d managed to get the shaker window lined up better, and the sentiment too. All in all though, I’m pleased.