shake it, santa baby!

this week's awesome ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ title and idea comes from our lovely fellow belle marianne who came up with "shake it, santa baby" while she was in the shower!* can you guess the brief? you actually get a choice for this one: you can make a shaker card OR make a card that features santa OR... both... which is what i did:

two recycled xmas cards and a piece of (unprinted) inkjet transparency from my stash; red cardstock: core'dinations; tiny clear microbeads made especially for shaker cards that have the price tag from a LSS that closed at least 8 years ago, but somehow do not have a manufacturer's name on them??; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

apparently the overall theme of my week is "CHEATING" lol. i put it down to the fact that engineering is not my strong suit, so i'm always looking for a way to minimize that aspect of design. in the case of shaker cards, it means that whereas i love the look of a fancy multi-paned window, the thought of cutting one out with a craft knife does not particularly appeal. sooooooooo... i took a pre-existing diecut window from a pretty store-bought card i was sent over the holidays... and i layered it over a pretty snowscape featuring santa and his reindeer from another pretty store-bought card i got last christmas. here's a shot of the two original cards, just so you can see what bits are which:

i used a piece of clear acrylic behind the cut out, foam tape around the window opening to raise the top layer high enough to accommodate the little clear microbeads which fill the shaker, and i machine stitched around the perimeter just to hold things together with extra security. in the closeup i think you can very nearly almost see how the little beads and the glitter on the background layer give the whole thing a really festive and magical shimmer. ok, no, you really can't see that, but trust me, irl it's cool, k?

and now why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ where you can see marianne's and stephanie's gorgeous cards and start planning your own! ♥

*i ~LOVE~ that story b/c i'm always having all my best ideas in the shower, too!!! :)