I was beginning to panic yesterday, as I saw one of the challenges I wanted to enter was closing – and I hadn’t even started my card! The challenge is from ‘Just US Girls’ and has the theme of using three colours – pink, purple, and grey. I had an idea in my head, and just didn’t get round to doing it. Until yesterday.

I was using a grey ‘Narwhal’ card from Lawn Fawn, which I had bought from Sevens Hills Crafts, and thought that would be a good base for my card. I was going to use the unicorns from the Avery Elle stamp and matching die set ‘Pegasus Duo’, and I wanted to make a shaker card. I haven’t had much luck with shaker cards, but I still keep persevering, and having a go. I look at quite a few videos on YouTube – and usually still get it wrong!

This time, I stamped the unicorns, embossed the outline in black, coloured them in with my Zig pens, die cut them, and then planned to have them on the outside of the shaker shape, with clouds and stars from the same set – then I changed my mind. As always!

I cut a heart-shaped aperture in white card with my Sue Wilson fillable die ‘Fluttering Hearts’, added a piece of acetate then added two layers of white foam, raising the white card enough to add sequins and glass beads. This is where I usually go wrong – I forget the acetate. This time, I kept concentration enough to remember. Yay!

Once I layered them together, I searched my sequin and bead stash for colours of sequins with the purple and pink theme. I found a few, but they were mixed with other sequins. How much time did it take me to get enough out of the pile that I wanted? You don’t really want to know….honest.

I placed them in the aperture behind the acetate – then how do you add the base card so it is square, and the beads don’t fall out whilst doing it? I guessed! I tried adding the base grey card with no glue and felt how close to the edge it was, added the glue, then went for it. It worked….!

This is where I decided not to use the unicorns and to stamp the three little stars around the aperture instead. I can hear you now – what if it goes wrong? What if the stars don’t stamp correctly, what if I make a mess of it? I know, I know. But I did it anyway.

You could probably hear my squeal of delight across the whole of Chesterfield.

I wanted a sentiment, and I wanted it in purple, as I had just realised that the purple I was going to add was on my unicorns – and I wasn’t using them. I used my purple Zig on the sentiment stamp, and stamped it a couple of times with my Misti, on a spare piece of card, as I wasn’t brave enough to stamp it directly onto the card. (I can hear you all again, breathing a sigh of relief) I also wanted to have a grey layer underneath the white sentiment strip.

The white sentiment and grey layer were cut out using my Sue Wilson ‘Frames and Tags’ die set, as they layer together quite nicely, and have a stitched inner part. I did consider making the banner slightly raised and wavy, but kept it flat to the card, feeling that the shaker element added enough interest.

I am very, very pleased with the way this shaker card turned out. There are a few tweeks I want to make to future attempts, but all-in-all I had fun. Isn’t that the name of the game? I’m having LOADSA fun playing with it.