Sassy Scrapper: Shaker Christmas cards with Kat

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Shaker Christmas cards with Kat

Hi everyone. My name is Kat and I'm super excited to be the guest designer for November. I've been scrapbooking for about three years but have been making handmade cards since I can remember. I'm a total craft addict and also enjoy sewing, quilting, cross stitch, mosaics and shopping for craft supplies. When I am not creating I am crunching numbers at my day job, teaching group fitness classes or spending time with my family. Today I'm sharing some ideas for making Christmas shaker cards. I love to make shaker cards for special occasions because I think they add an extra element of fun and are fairly easy to make. A couple of my favourite methods for making shaker cards are using vellum and a sewing machine or clear plastic and foam mounting tape.

My first shaker card was made by cutting a sheet of patterned paper from the Simple Stories Claus & Co collection a fraction smaller (e.g. 1/4 inch smaller) than my card base and a piece of metallic gold vellum a fraction smaller again. I then machine stitched a border just inside the edges of the vellum, stopping about 2 inches from where I started to insert some sequins from the Pink Paislee Yuletide collection, and then closing the gap.

My second card was made using 4x4 journalling cards from the Simple Stories Claus & Co collection. I used a circle die and my Big Shot machine to cut a circle window in one 4x4 card, backed the window with some clear plastic (from a spare photo sleeve) and mounted it over a second 4x4 card using foam tape that I placed around the edges of the window to create a 'well' to hold the sequins. The trick is to make sure there are no big gaps in your foam tape 'well' for the sequins to fall through.

It's fun to experiment with using different items inside the shakers - small wood veneers, beads, buttons and cake decorations (e.g. sprinkles) all work well. You can also use different dies (such as letter dies) to cut different shaped windows, and use the same techniques for tags and layouts. I encourage you to have a play!