Why I rarely make shaker cards....

So, the latest edition of Simply Cards & Papercraft arrived on my doormat this morning. The free gift this month is a vase and flowers stamp and stamp set. Now, having seen Sue Wilson make a card using alcohol gel hand rub at the weekend, I thought I'd have a go. I know from experience that glue between acetate takes about a fortnight to set, so I figured I'd try using my fuse tool to make an instant  heat seal. Um. Let's just say it didn't go well...

So I decided, having no patience, to make a standard shaker card with sequins. This time my fuse tool made perfect sequin proof pockets. I stamped the bouquet of flowers on white card and then die cut the vase below them.  I then used a tattered lace pindot rectangle to cut out the whole thing. I stamped the stems on a small piece of card and then coloured everything in with my zig pens. 

I stuck my shaker element behind the aperture with red liner tape leaving the red on so it didn't stick that side. I glued the stems on behind the shaker, then added 1mm foam tape around the edge of the back of the image and stuck it on a rectangle of purple card.

At this point I wasn't happy that I didn't have an edge to my vase, the stamp of the vase seemed slightly smaller than the die, so that wasn't a solution. I'd already planned to join up the stems and flowers with a fineliner pen and so I decided to draw in the vase using the faint emboss of the edge of the die as a guide. This probably would have worked if I'd done it before I added the foam tape and so my pen wobbled on the unsupported cardstock. I decided to cut the vase again out of pale blue card and then fussy cut round the aperture to give me a vase shaped frame which I hoped was reminiscent of thick glass. I had to cut the frame thicker than I wanted to hide the magnitude of the pen wobble. In order to distract from this I added glamour dust to the frame before gluing it on to the card.

I then realised that the bottom flower of the bouquet was hidden behind the frame. Fortunately, the stamp set included a single flower and so I stamped this twice, coloured it in and fussy cut it before going round the edges with a black pen. At this point I realised that there was a single flower die in the set. Doh! I then glued the two flowers on and mounted it on a 6x6 card to finish.

The sequins? Oh, I just thought they added a little more sparkle. There certainly aren't any black smudges or marks hidden under them. Nope. None at all. Definitely none...