Birthday Shaker

I've been participating in Online Card Classes' "Watercolor for Card Makers: Exploring Mediums" class this past week. It's kind of a followup to their earlier "Watercolor for Card Makers" class, but this time they focus more on different watercolor mediums and how to use them. I decided to make a shaker card, using a lesson by Shari Carroll on Day 3 of class as inspiration.

I first made random scribbles on a piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper, using my Faber Castell gelatos. Once I had applied the colors, I blended them with my finger. After I'd blended them, the colors were a little pale & blah, so I reapplied somewhat darker gelatos to get a richer color, then blended again. Finally, I took a Prima stencil (name unknown), and taped it over my panel. I wiped through the stencil with a baby wipe, to lift some of the gelato color from the open areas and create a subtle pattern.

I die cut 3 openings in my panel, using dies from Lawn Fawn's "Party Balloons" set. I went ahead and also die cut the first part of my greeting with the "Happy" die by Simon Says Stamp, from black paper. I positioned it on the panel, and used that as a placeholder so I could stamp & clear heat emboss the "birthday," from one of the greetings in Simon Says Stamp's "Big Birthday Wishes" set. Then I glued down the "happy."

I next started applying double layers of foam tape to the back of my panel, so the beads I was using would have plenty of room to shake. I was in the middle of this, when I realized I'd forgotten to adhere the acetate behind my windows, so the shaker beads would not fall out! Thankfully, I was able to peel the foam tape away from the upper part of the panel, without ruining anything. I cut a piece of acetate, and adhered it with some Be Creative double-sided tape. I finished adding the foam tape, and then went around the edges of each of my window areas with my powder bag, to help deactivate the adhesive on the edges of the foam tape. Then I put my seed beads in each window, removed the liner papers from the foam adhesive, and adhered a piece of teal cardstock as a backer sheet. I tied 3 bows from crochet thread, and glued them to the bottoms of the balloon windows with Ranger Multi Medium Matte. All that was left then was to mount it to a top-folding A2 card base. I will be giving this to my sister-in-law for her birthday next week.

I'm entering my card in the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp's Wednesday "No Designer Paper"
Simon Says Stamp's Monday "STAMPtember Use a Stamp Challenge & Blog Hop"