Heart Shaped Box Shaker Valentine Card

Hi everyone,

It's Elle again from Empire of the Cat, and this time I have a Valentine's Day card to share with you using some really cool chipboard pieces. Here's the finished card: 

 My card today was going to be an easel style card with a shaker on the front, but as you can see, I made some changes. However it uses the same dimensions, which are - one piece of cardstock measuring 11 inches x 5.5 inches wide. I score this card at 5.5 inches and then at 2.75 inches and then fold and crease so they are nice and flat.

 Step one is to prepare the card base, and this time I am using this tissue paper to cover one side of the card and adhering it with Matte Medium using a paintbrush.

Once the card is covered, leave it to dry and start work on the chipboard pieces.

 Remember to give the chippies a wipe down, before painted them with white gesso.

 Now that my card base is dry, I gave it a coat of clear gesso to protect it during the next stages, and left it to dry.

 Meanwhile, I am using the little niche as my shaker box, so I cut a rectangle of acetate from some old packaging to fit on top, making sure that it is big enough to cover the flaps on the side so it can be glued down.  The arrow above is pointing to the acetate as it's a little hard to see :)

 I pulled out an assortment of sequins and beads that I thought might look nice but I had no red sequins, however I did have these silver heart shaped sequins...

 So I decided to quickly paint some of them red using alcohol ink! This took no time at all and the alcohol ink dries very fast, so I would encourage you to try this trick if you find you don't have a colour you want.

 Back to the heart frame for my shaker, and I decided to use some embossing powder on it - I'm using embossing powder on all the chippies actually - and this one is a nice pinky purple glitter EP. 

 Then I heat embossed the LOVE word and the heart with a red glitter EP.

 Pink and red and purple - of course they all go together!

 Here are all the pieces heat embossed and ready to go!

 I glued the little niche box together and put some white card at the back as I thought this would be a good contrast and would show off the sequins better. As you will see later, I changed my mind about this, but that's allowed :) I put something heavy on it to hold it in place while the glued dried.

 Here is the shaker heart niche all glued down but it looks quite bare.

 It looks much better with the red heart in the middle, don't you think? OK so let's leave that alone for a minute and get back to working on the card base.

 I added some magenta and violet liquid acrylic paints, and metallic plum acrylic to the card and sprayed it with water to make it all streaky, and then dried it with a heat tool. Then I added some gold metallic, violet acrylic and white paint splatters and left it to dry.

 Using some Finnabair Icing Paste in gold, I added some gold highlights to the LOVE word, the red heart and around the edges of the heart frame.

Here's another close up on the icing paste.

 Once the paint was dry on the card base, I used some Black Archival ink to do some random stamping using this "Soulmate" stamp, and then edged the card with the same gold Icing Paste as before.

 And here's where I changed my mind about the easel card! I turned it sideways and it became a trifold card instead! It's funny how these things work out. All the way though I was planning an easel card that would be propped open and standing upright, but then when it came to assembly, I turned it sideways and positioned the LOVE word on the diagonal, and decided I liked it better that way. So now the heart frame niche shaker box would still be adhered to the front, just turned 90 degrees from my original plan!

 Closed position

 Open position - as you can see the shaker looks good with the white background showing through, however, as soon as the card is standing up and all the shaker goodness falls to the bottom, I thought it looked a bit bare with just the white background.

 This is really not a big deal but it bothered me, so I decided to open it back up and slide in a piece of patterned paper to match the rest of the card.

 When it is flat, there really isn't much of a difference but when it is upright...

 It makes me happier and I think it completes the look.

 I hope you will try making a little shaker card using this lovely little heart niche. I'd love to see what you create.

 Till next time,

 Elle
Empire of the Cat


PROJECT RECIPE:
GSL Cuts - Little Heart Niche D64B Layered Love Title D22W
Finnabair - Tissue Paper, Soulmate stamp, Violet and Magenta Liquid Acrylics, Metallic Plum Acrylic, Unicorn Hair Acrylic, gold Icing Paste, White Gesso, Transparent Gesso
Wow - embossing ink, Royal Crush EP, Red Glitz EP,
Decoart - Matte Medium
Tim Holtz - alcohol ink - poppyfield
Archival Ink - Black
Neenah White Cardstock 110lb
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
From Stash: acetate from cake box, sequins, beads