Birthday Wishes Sequin Shaker Card

Pretty Pink Posh is hosting a "Sequin Shaker Blog Hop," from April 26-28. The challenge is to create a sequin shaker card, any theme. Prizes are available from several sponsors, and you can win either by uploading a project or commenting on others' posts (or both!).

I can't say that I've ever really made a shaker card before. And the fact that this needed to use sequins created another challenge, since that is one supply I do not have in abundance. The ones that I do have are mostly bright, bold colors, so any "soft" theme was kind of out of the question. So I finally decided to make a birthday card.

I found a sketch/example in the book Card Sketches for Paper Crafters, by the editors of Paper Crafts magazine. It didn't have a shaker element, but rather, a large party hat, complete with pleated-ribbon brim and pom-pom. I felt that the main part of the hat could serve as the shaker cut-out, so I decided to go for it.

I created the card front by cutting a piece of scrap cardstock to 5.5x7.5", mostly for use in testing my placement of the hat. When I had the hat drawn in where I wanted it, I cut it out with my ruler & craft knife. I adhered a piece of patterned paper I got from my scrap stash to the front of the cardstock panel, and cut the triangle out from that as well. Finally, I stitched around the triangle with my sewing machine.

I applied a double-thickness of foam adhesive around the opening on the backside of the panel. Only then did I remember, I was supposed to adhere a piece of acetate to the back FIRST to keep the sequins from falling out the front! So I carefully peeled the adhesive off, cut a piece of acetate from some leftover packaging, and glued it in place with my ATG adhesive runner. Then I replaced the foam tape.

I embossed a piece of yellow cardstock with Cuttlebug's "Happy Birthday" embossing folder, to use for the back panel of the shaker. I peeled the release papers off the foam tape sections, and adhered the cardstock panel onto those. Um, wait a minute...what about the sequins? Yes, I'd forgotten to put those in first--my second bumble! So I oh-so-carefully pulled back a corner of the yellow embossed cardstock, and stuck sequins through the opening. Finally, I determined I had enough, and resealed the shaker portion of the card.

The rest of the hat was fairly easy. I pleated/glued ribbon down for the brim, and used DMC embroidery floss to make the pom-pom. The pom-pom actually turned out to be a bit more difficult than the brim. Mostly because I didn't realize that I really needed to separate the strands of floss and THEN wrap & tie them together into a loop and cut the strands; not the other way around. But I finally managed to get it fluffed out enough.

After all that, the greeting was pretty straightforward. I stamped one of the greetings from the Simon Says Stamp "Birthday Messages" set onto a piece of bright turquoise cardstock, heat-embossing it with American Crafts' Zing "Mustard" embossing powder. SIDE NOTE: I frankly think it's a brighter yellow than "mustard," but they didn't ask me when they named it! :) I positioned the greeting panel on the card where I wanted it, and made tick marks where it met the edge of the shaker window. The I cut off that angle, added more ribbon above & below to frame it, and glued it in place. Finally I adhered the whole front panel to a same-size card base with more foam adhesive, to match the thickness of the shaker portion.

And there it is--my first (but not last) shaker card. WHEW!