Shaker Card Tutorial

I recently came up with an easier way to make shaker cards. I love using pouches from Impression Obsession that are thin for mailing, but deep enough to hold most fillings. (To follow this tutorial, each step comes after the photo.)

I start by assembling all the supplies I'll need. I also wiped a dryer sheet on the inside of the pouch to remove any static that might make the beads cling to the cup.

After stamping and coloring in the image, I peeled back just 1/2 of the protective liner on the back of the pouch. Holding the liner up away from the card, I attached the bottom of the pouch to the cardstock as shown. Notice the other half of the liner sticking up from the pouch.

Holding the cardstock away from the unattached portion of the image, I added the beads.
With the filling in place, I pulled the liner completely off and carefully pressed the cardstock to the pouch, keeping it upright so the beads stayed in the bottom.
Then, I added a small piece of double-stick tape in each corner of the top of the image cardstock and placed the overlay (which I ran through a CB folder first) over the pouch, forming a "sandwich" of image, pouch and overlay.
Finally, I attached the "sandwich" to a red card. I plan to embellish and add a greeting later.

I hope this helps make it easier for you to enjoy making shaker cards!

Sympathy Cards

Sadly, today I needed to make not one, but two sympathy cards.

For the top one, I used a Bible verse from my collection of Our Daily Bread Designs stamps. They have a wonderful variety of verses in beautiful fonts. I left the inside blank to write a personal note.

The second card has a Stampin'Up saying, and "With Sympathy" (also SU) on the inside.

I used Tim Holtz distress inks on the white edges of each saying. The blue/green butterfly was also sponged with Peeled Paint and Broken China distress inks. The other was stamped on coordinating background paper from K & Co.

When making sympathy cards, I like to put whatever encouraging verse I've used on the outside so that if the card is displayed, people will be reminded of their source of comfort.

CASE-ing the Catalogs--Repeating

The apple card on page 96 of the SU Idea Book reminded me of the value in repeating an image 3 times (or sometimes 5, usually an odd number.) Here's a card that repeats one of the blossoms from the SU "Growing Green" set.

With Spring around the corner, I thought yellow flowers would be appropriate. After stamping them on a scrap piece of dsp and cutting them out, I painted them with yellow Twinkling H2O's. For the centers, I used green mini beads held down with Crystal Lacquer. Once they dried, I mounted them on the card with dimensionals.

The ribbon on the side was glued down in one flat strip. The "bow" is actually another piece of ribbon, knotted and attached with a glue dot. Very handy way to do that for those of us who are "bow impaired!"

The greeting was stamped, cut down and mounted onto the card. Then the flower strip was mounted over it with double-stick tape so that just the words would "peek" out.

CASE-ing the Catalogs--Scallops

I got the idea for this card from the Christmas card on p. 69 of the SU Idea Book. Since I used such a dark cardstock for the base, I went bananas with the scallops to lighten it up. It makes me think of all those crinolines we used to wear under our full skirts--remember???

The stamp I used is "Elizabeth" from Stampin'Up and a Hello! stamp from Hero Arts. The brown gems add a little sparkle.

Watercolored Flowers

Last week I taught the Mothers Class how to watercolor using markers. We first made a palette by scribbling, very precisely, of course;) on a non-porous surface such as the lid of an ink pad or the back of an acrylic block. We then used our brushes to pick up the color to apply to the image.

For the class, I die cut some watercolor paper using a Nesties label die. They stamped the image in class with India Ink Black, a good ink to use that will not run or bleed. For shading, we added more of the same colors to parts of the petals and the envelope. Then we spread some gray ink at the bottom to "anchor" the image.

As a final touch, we added gold Stickles to the centers of the blossoms and mounted the finished label to the card with dimensionals. Some dsp, self-stick ribbon and a Bo-Ho Blossom all added to the finished look.

CASE-ing the Catalogs

Thanks to the card shown on P. 110 of the SU Idea Book, here is the card we'll be doing in Mothers Class next week. Since I wanted to use blue for the card base, I used blue chalk in the one flower. There is also a blue gem in the center, surrounded by mini-pearls.

The stamp sets I used are Fabulous Florets for the flowers and Abundant Hope for the words inside and out. I also used a crimper for the green floral strip, and added three larger pearls beneath it.

Just for variety's sake, I also made another card using the same pattern but different flower and greeting. Isn't it amazing how the same sketch can look so different!

HERE'S A TIP: When I need to make sure I stamp a greeting perfectly straight, I mount it on an acrylic block with grid lines etched into the other side. When I go to stamp it, I look at the grid line instead of the stamp itself. Works every time!