Shake your booty shaker card

It has been a long time since I made a shaker card. I always found them rather... fussy. But this one actually worked out well for me. I knew I wanted a black and purple color scheme for this card. I ended up being inspired by this purple strip of cardstock that I found on my desk, which I had used to punch a circle for another project.

I wrapped a piece of wide black polka dotted washi tape around the card. I like how it is kind of translucent. Then I stamped the sentiment above the tape and embossed with silver powder.

I attached a piece of clear plastic that I cut from some packaging (I'm always up for upcycling). Then I added pieces of foam tape around the circle on the back side and filled it with large silver and iridescent glitter. After deciding that I would use a black panel on the white card base, I attached a piece of black cardstock slightly larger than the circle opening with the foam tape. I think this is where I have always gone wrong in the past -- I had tried to attach the shaker panel directly to the card instead of closing it off with another piece of paper.

I dry embossed another piece of black cardstock and attached it to a folded card. I punched a border from white cardstock and attached it across the bottom of the card. Then I adhered the purple panel using foam tape all around the edges. I stamped the letters onto white cardstock and embossed with silver powder, ran them through my Xyron, cut them out freehand and layered them on the card (one of my favorite easy personalization techniques).

Finally I found the perfect paper flower to attach with a glue dot and topped it off with a large gem that I had purchased for a decorating supply at my daughter's birthday party.

Starburst card (nothing to do with the candy, unfortunately)

So I haven't been blogging, but that doesn't mean I haven't been creating! As my daughter has gotten older, (almost 2 1/2! -- she'll tell you that she's a "big girl") I have been snatching bits of time here and there to make cards and work on her scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are important to me so that she'll have a record of who she is and how she got that way. The cards are important because they are a much lower stress way to exercise my creativity on a small canvas that doesn't necessarily need to be of keepsake quality.

Here's a recent card that I am particularly proud of because it was the first time I created a "starburst" effect with patterned paper (I am sure this isn't the correct terminology for this, but I'm lacking time to look it up). This is something I had seen all over the place in magazines and had been pinning on Pinterest for some time and which, quite frankly looked simple to achieve digitally but too hard to do by hand. I had been struggling with scrapbooking my daughter birth and early days, feeling that no design I could come up with would somehow be special enough. Voila, "starburst" effect layout. But I wanted to practice before I did it on a scrapbook page, so came up with this card design for a co-worker's birthday.

I made a standard 5.5 by 4.25 inch card with white card stock and put a dot in the lower left corner. I then cut a long triangle from patterned paper and lined the point up with the dot. I trimmed off the excess paper that overlapped the edge of the card. Then I cut another triangle and overlapped the first one, also lining up one point with the dot on the card. I repeated until I had covered the card with a rainbow of patterned paper scraps. I thought there was probably a scientific way to do this but I just eyeballed it and I think it came out pretty well.

The point at which all of the papers met was a little sloppy. I toyed with adding a sentiment there but nothing seemed quite right so I saved the sentiment for the inside (it just says "Happy birthday" -- nothing special) and instead added a large paper flower. I layered on a smaller pink flower and of course added a little rhinestone bling in the center (those cheap adhesive gems from Michaels or ACMoore that are like $1/sheet). I stamped the recipient's name with tiny alphabet stamps in one of my favorite inks -- Colorbox Charcoal chalk ink -- added a bit more bling and I was done.

The recipient loved it and put it in her special box of cards that I've made for her that she claims she is keeping for when I'm famous (for doing what, I'm not quite sure, but I appreciate her confidence)! I loved that I used up a bunch of scraps and I got to practice a new technique, all during my daughter's nap time.

One of these days I will have a little more time to make a video or at least take pictures during each step so I can show instead of tell how I did something. Maybe when I (finally) make the scrapbook page of my daughter's birth that making that card is helping me design!

Gold Ball

Another layout with old photos from 2006. I'm trying to catch up. Also practice new techniques on pages I don't care about so much anymore.

My husband's company has this ball every year to recognize the high achievers (of which he is one). I originally planned to do this as a single page digital layout but I printed the photos and not the background I created. I wanted to use gold but knew that I really couldn't print metallic gold from my inkjet. The photos sat around in a to-be-scrapped folder for months because I couldn't find a layout I liked for so many pictures. Finally I decided to make it a two-page spread and try out some new techniques on it.

One of the new-to-me techniques was using paint. I recently bought a few Ranger Paint Dabbers from joann.com. First I thought they didn't work right because I didn't realize they weren't supposed to go on smoothly. I actually liked the texture they provided and the gold is really vibrant IRL. The backgrounds are just regular cheapo black cardstock but I used the paint dabber on to "dry brush" around the edges.

I made the Gold Ball title using the gold dabber on an also new-to-me product, Tim Holtz's grungeboard. I picked up a pack at Michaels with a 40% off coupon. Interesting material. Not sure why I'd want something bendy on my page but I will try experimenting more. If I can get past the smell! Really odd smelling product.

Anyway, after dabbing the grungeboard letters and the small heart on the second page with two coats and emphasizing the bubbly texture of the dabber, I rubbed the edges with a Ruby Satin pigment Colorbox Cats Eye. I have a few of these ink pads but rarely pull them out since they are rather small and it seems like a lot of work to ink up a stamp with them. But it worked wonders for inking edges and getting into the small crevices! I wasn't sure that the pigment ink would dry on the painted grungeboard and wondered if I would have to emboss, but it dried just fine.


It's making me think I should get some more Cats Eyes. On sale at joann.com for $1.49... I usually wait two months in between orders so I have time to play with my new goodies but there is a free shipping coupon for July and a few things I have been wanting.

Anyway, I also inked the edges of the gold mat on the second page with the Ruby Cats Eye. Then I stamped on the cream ribbon several times with a swirly scroll border stamp from Inkadinkadoo and the Ruby ink. This was more successful than I thought it would be, as I had stamped on ribbon before and it was blurry. The pigment ink came out clear and it dried fairly quickly. I'll be trying this again!

Another new technique for me was stamping with paint on transparencies. Well I actually used cut up packaging from some glitter rub-ons I bought. How very green of me, I know. Or cheap. I used the Ranger ink dabber in gold with various clear stamps. The swirl corner is K&Co Amy Butler lotus. The little journaling spot is from one of those $1 Studio G sets. The flower medallion is from Making Memories.

I wasn't sure how I was going to attach the transparencies ater I cut them out but I discovered that Zots glue dots really are totally clear! I usually get the GlueDot brand (3L maybe?) but I had bought a pack of the mini singles Zots and I am impressed! I had planned to put a purple gem in the flower centers, thinking it would cover the adhesive but I really didn't need to as you could not see the Zot at all. I added the gems anyway to bring in some more purple and give it some bling.

Of course I figured out the Zots were truly clear after I had already stapled on the small journaling block, which is the one part of this spread that I am really not happy with. Oh well. I did color the staples with a black Slick Writer before stapling so at least they aren't too noticeable. This is a good way to color your staples to match your layout -- color the staples before you put them in the stapler, then you can touch them up in necessary after you staple.

I used a purple Slick Writer to write on the plastic. Not sure it really matches but I was trying to bring in some purple since I used the "Rock On" and "You're An Original" die cuts. These were from a K&Co tin that I picked up at a discount store in NJ. I would guess it is discontinued since it was steeply discounted. I attached them with foam tape.

The "Friends" strip actually was inside of the large medallion on the second page. That and the "Love" and quote die cuts are K&Co Amy Butler Lotus. They are attached with foam tape. I bought the diecuts, chipboard letters, sticky ribbon and matching clear stamps when it was on sale at Michaels. The I got the two paper packs on sale from joann.com so you'll probably see more projects using these supplies.


The journaling block on the first page is s a digital element that I typed my text on, printed out and cut. The journaling block on the second page is from the DCWV Le Creme sticker stack as are the photo corner, "All Dressed Up" sticker that I used to cover the hole in the large K&Co medallion, and the cream flourishes on both pages. Some of the flourishes are actually cut from the sticker backing sheet as the actual stickers weren't quite the shape I was going for so I cut around them and used the excess instead.

This is the spread that the swirl glitter paper came from that I used on yesterday's wedding card. The dotted gold paper was also from that same paper pack from Target. I totally cheated to stretch the paper but gluing down my photo collage on the first page and then cutting squares of paper to fit behind and make up a square shape with actually cutting a large square from the paper. I love to do things like this to stretch my supplies, especially when I only have one sheet of something I like. I am trying to get away from just using the fancy papers as backgrounds.

Iused my trusty Dymo label maker for the small subtitles on the first page. The final embellishments were some white feathers that I bought forever ago at JoAnn's thinking I might use them in my wedding centerpieces. I thought they complemented nicely the feathers that my goofy husband put in his shirt collar.

That's it! It took me a few days to finish this spread as I kept it out on my craft desk and kept rearranging the elements until I thought they worked. I actually finished it over the weekend, not last night but we were at my SIL's rehearsal dinner last night so no craftiness for me. One very cool things is that her future MIL made baseball hats for everyone at the dinner and used the monogram/logo that I designed for them. I will have to take a pic and post.

Tomorrow is the wedding and my parents are coming to town so I probably won't be back until Sunday the earliest.