Under the Sea!

Hello, crafty friends!

You guys.....I can NOT get the beach off my brain. We are headed there next week for a family vacation and everywhere I look, I see the ocean, and waves, and the sand, and...and... I'M SO EXCITED!!

Naturally the only obvious conclusion to this story is that I'm up sharing this fun underwater card with you today!

Ok, let's talk about shaker cards. Perhaps one day I will write a short novel on my love/hate relationship with shaker cards and how it has morphed over the last year or so. When I saw my first shaker card, I immediately fell in love. I've tried multiple methods of creating shaker cards, and this method has been the best that's worked for me.

First, I stamped all the fish and other sea creatures on watercolor cardstock.These images are from the Lawn Fawn Fintastic Friends, Critters in the Sea, and So Jelly stamp sets. I used a combination of Zig Clean Color Real Brush markers to color the images, and then I fussy-cut all the sea creatures out and set them aside. And then I ate my weight in ice cream after the stress of fussy cutting those jellyfish. Because, you guys.....one word: TENTACLES. Time for a moment of silence for the years of my life that I'll never get back after cutting those jellyfish.

I painted a quick wash of distress ink over my watercolor cardstock panel. I used Tumbled Glass and Mermaid Lagoon for the ocean-like background.I used less pigment toward the top and then used more and more pigment as I reached the bottom to achieve the ombre water look. I glued all the images on to the card panel and then moved on to the shaker part of the card.

I used some kraft colored cardstock and cut bunches of rectangle frames using the Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Frames die. I glued them all together to build up the walls of my shaker window. I then poured in some sequins toward the bottom but also glued a few individual sequins to the upper portion of the card to give the look of movement. I think this really makes a difference when making shaker cards because then all the sequins are not limited to just the bottom of the card.

After I poured the sequins on to the panel, I then glued my rectangle frame "walls" that I had assembled on to the panel. At this point, I recommend looking at your card on eye level to see if you need to add anymore frames to the wall. If your sequins are sticking up higher than your wall, you'll need to cut a few more frames and add to your wall. After I was happy with the thickness of my wall, I cut a piece of acetate that was slightly smaller than the size of my card panel, and glued that clear window on top of my wall.

Hang on grasshopper, there's only one more step to finish the shaker window!

I then cut one final frame and glued that on top of the acetate window. Now, the acetate window is hidden beneath that final frame that's sitting on top of the entire masterpiece. With the whole card panel being complete now, I glued it on to my card base.

I really like this method of doing shaker cards because you can easily keep building up your shaker walls to custom fit any kind of sequins or any amount of sequins you want to put into a card. Just remember to keep in mind that adding more walls will add to the bulk of the card and maybe change the price of mailing it depending on its weight. I also like this method because if you make the wall slightly higher than the height of your sequins laying on the card panel, then everything will be at a consistent level of thickness all the way across the entire card.

That finished off my card for today. Thanks for stopping by! Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

Kelly