whoooooooooooole lotta shakin' goin' on!

we're still celebrating interactive* cards at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ with the lovely sybrina, and you still have nearly an entire week to join us, which we hope you will! here's what i made this week:

the background is composed of lots of torn scraps of vintage paper with white or off-white backgrounds, placed pretty randomly on a not quite 5.5x7 panel; then i applied various shades of blue ranger distress and archival inks to the top 2/3 of the card with sponge applicators. i placed the sizzix xmas tree die pretty carefully on the panel, so it'd cut the tree sitting straight along my designated horizon line. then i went back and added ranger white texture paste through a TH harlequin and flourish stencil to be the snowy ground; and viva decor silver glitter paste tinted with a TINY amt of ultramarine colorburst thru a TH snowflake stencil in the sky area. then i did the hardest part: waited for the whole thing to dry completely!!! :) finally i glued a scrap of inkjet transparency behind the tree opening, and placed 2 layers of foam tape *seamlessly* all the way around the cut out tree shape, so that microbeads would be unable to escape. then i added the tiny clear microbeads and applied the green dcwv chevron paper backing. i matted the whole thing on some dark green core'dinations cardstock and attached it to a folded kromekote white glossy card. et voila! 

yep, it's another shaker card. yep, it's the same colors as the last one... and it even has another blue burlap poinsettia, lol! but it's quite a different vibe, isn't it? clearly we can see i'm still obsessed with ink over torn layers, and loads of stenciled texture paste. the surprise (to me) was that i could incorporate those elements into what is otherwise a pretty "normal" xmas card. also thought it'd be fun to use the NEGATIVE space of a diecut for a shaker card... by no means a new idea, but one that i never feel like i take enough advantage of, so i did this time. go, me! :)

stephanie and sybrina also have lovely new cards to show off, won't you go and feast your eyes upon them now, darlings! ♥

*what do we mean by interactive? well, a card that does more than open and shut, really. some examples? shaker cards, slider cards, pop-ups, box or explosion cards, cards that incorporate games or puzzles, super-funky folds or... well, there are lots more ideas in the readers' gallery, and the original "shake, rattle and roll" post has some links to pinterest and tutorials!