Starfish Shshshaker!

I was commissioned again to make a couple of special cards.

As you all must know by now, my favorite types of cards are shaker cards. Even though they are a pain in the rear, I just love the interactive-ness of them, and the surprise of the recipient is enough to make these cards worth the time spent.

This first card was made for an 18th birthday, for a girl who loves the beach. I had these cute little starfish laying around for a while and felt this was the appropriate time to pull them out. I think these could have been some of the very first embellishments I bought when I started paper crafting almost 8 years ago. The sand is real sand from a beach near our home. How authentic! lol


















I started out with white Bazzil Basics cardstock. The frame is a sandwich of Bazzil ribbed cardstock, then a piece of Jac paper, a piece of acetate, another piece of Jac paper, then a piece of thin foam core board to make it a bit stiffer. I only had thin foam tape so there's a couple layers of that.

A shaker secret I learned from a pro (Michelle), is to use Dimensional Magic in the corners on the inside, so just in case you didn't get the tape in the right places, all of the filler won't fall out. I love Dimentional Magic. Its almost a good as super glue!

So after the DM dried, I very carefully flipped the frame over, being careful to leave the top tape paper on so I could funnel the sand in, and placed it. Unfortunately, and this is where I get very real and admit that things don't always work the way they're supposed to... after I had put most of the sand in, for some reason, the frame had gotten stuck down crooked. Grr, I hate crooked and pride myself on things always measuring up, almost perfectly. So instead of being able to just pull it off and replace it, the tape was so sticky it took half the cardstock with it, and some of the tape actually stuck to the card. (rolleyes) So I had to go on a search through my paper box looking for another sheet of this cardstock, come back to the table, clean all the spilled sand off my work space, and give it another try.

The Happy Birthday is stamped with a dark blue Brilliance ink on matching cardstock, which has the edges distressed, then layered on dark blue Bazzil Basics. Then to kinda tie into the Nautical theme, I tied it all together with the red and white ribbon. I have to admit, I did play with it for a bit after it was done. ;-)

The next card was a wedding card. A few years ago I had found this gorgeous pack of scrapbooking paper that I always felt was just too pretty to use for just anything. I had to wait and use it for something special. I KNOW that all serious paper crafters can relate to this. Come on now, admit it, you all have that special piece of paper or card that you can't bare to use...

there, now didn't that feel good to admit that?! lol
















Again, I started with Bazzil Basics cardstock, this has the crosshatch design, I think its so elegant. The paper I wrote about above, is the paper on the left side. It's some of the most gorgeous, textured stuff I've seen. It was also matched in the package, with other equally gorgeous papers, this was just my favourite.

I wanted to try something different and used some of the netting I used on the gift I wrapped a couple of posts ago... and I tied it over the left side. I could have used ribbon but didn't want to take anything away from the paper. This netting added a bit of interest.

You can't see it in this picture, and you have to really look for it in person, but I used a stamp that says "love" with VersaMark ink, which provides a bit of a watermark. Just a little detail I like to add. The stamp was big enough that I only stamped it, at an angle, three times.

The hearts are embossed gold on the same colour card and carefully cut out. They are attached with foam tape to give it a bit of dimention.

For the Congratulations, I used my Marvy Marker in red and coloured onto my stamp, stamped it on the same card stock, layered it on a hairline bit of red cardstock, then on some of my favourite gold paper. This is also attached with foam tape for dimension.

Both cards are fully lined with plain paper, and have custom made envelopes.