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

Love Potion No. 9 by Betsy Skagen

 

 Sometimes people need a little help in the romance department--that's why I invented Love Potion No. 9.

Each jar contains a potion of cherubic magic. Just open the mason jar, dab a little love potion behind your ears and let the romance begin!

Tutorial: How to Make Your Own Love Potion No. 9

Begin by painting gesso on Gypsy Soul's wonderful canning jar chipboard and on an old wood frame.

Apply embossing ink and distressed silver embossing powder to the canning jar lid. Activate with heat gun.

Create a "wash" by mixing teal paint with water and paint onto a deli sheet and onto the base of the mason jar.

Apply embossing ink over the teal part of the jar and sprinkle with clear embossing powder. Activate with heat gun. Repeat several times until you have a thick glass-like consistency.

Reheat the silver part of your jar and drag the end of a paperclip through it to create lines. After it cools, you can accentuate the lines with a black pen.

Use a metallic silver paint pen to change a Faux Metal Number Plates from gold to silver.  

Cover the label part of the jar with black ink.

Create a label with your computer, print and cut out. Attach the computer label to the black label. Insert two brads into the number plate and adhere to the black label. 

Coat the deli paper with gloss medium. Place the jar on the deli paper. Add a cherub image and heart to the inside and cover with another coat of gloss medium.

Cut away the excess deli paper. Glue onto black cardstock and cut the black cardstock around the jar. 

Cut a piece of sheet music to fit the frame. Dry brush black and teal paint around the edges. Draw hearts with a light blue market. Scribble loose hearts with a silver marker inside the blue hearts. Use rub-ons to place a 9 inside each heart. 

Add black medallions to the corners.

Adhere the jar to the sheet music.

Use a silver paint pen to paint your frame silver. After it dries, dry brush black paint over the frame. Glue the frame to the sheet music.

I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial. Go out and make your own love potion--or any other concoction! Have a fantastic February -Betsy

Great Stuff

Canning Jar Chipboard

Faux Metal Number Plates

Wooden frame

Sheet music

Deli Paper

Black cardstock

Cherub image

Distressed Silver embossing powder

Rocky Road Bake Textures

Metallic silver paint pen

Metallic silver ink pen

Acrylic paint

Number rub-ons

Heart Sequins

Architextures black medallions

A Trio of Twisted Valentine Cards

Hiya everyone, Lora here for the awesome folks at Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts with a fun, fast project for a personalized Valentine's Day Card! I love the macabre little twist on these, but you can put whatever spin on it you want on them.

 A view of the backs and the pithy little expressions of quirky Valentine love.

I love that instead of flowers, her/his true love chose poisonous mushrooms! SO romantic!
Here's how it went....

I chose these great  Heart Cards (which are coming soon!). Using the solid 'back' side of the card as a template, I cut papers for the front and back of the solid half of the card.
I painted the fancy, front side of the card with ivory acrylic paint and set them aside to dry.

I then cut my collage images out and glued ruffle-y red ribbon to the back of the image, letting the ruffle-y bit show on the front. i used clips to keep the corner from popping up, giving the glue a chance to set.

 After everything dried, I glued the fancy front of the cards to the background papers and then glued the beribboned collage images in the center of the cards. I did stick some heavy weight objects on them to flatten them out whilst the glue dried as the ribbon tends to make them pop off the card.
I glued other collage images on the back and came up with some amusing little expressions of Valentine love which I printed out, cut and glued on the back.
Lastly, I attached a ribbon to each one for hanging using a rose medallion of scrap paper I cut from the left over collage images used on the back.
Easy peasy and quite personal.
Ah, Valentine love........

SUPPLIES:
Heart Cards (coming soon)
Various Halloween collage images
Acrylic paint
Red ruffle ribbon
Bo bunny and Graphic 45 scrapbook papers
Thank you for stopping by!

I adore you

Hi Everyone,

Jess here today.  It's that time of year when everyone starts to think about hearts and flowers.  When I saw these Heart Playing Cards(that will be coming to the store soon) I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
The cards come in two pieces.  You get the front decorative side and a plain piece of chipboard that makes up the back.

Start by running the back piece through your Xyron machine to cover the piece.  Add a piece of decorative paper, then emboss using the Tim Holtz 3d Botanical folder.  I wanted to make the back out of velvet, but I didn't have any velvet paper.  I tried several different things to create my own velvet paper and nothing looked quite right.  If you have ideas give me a shout! I ended up deciding to use this red paper that looked aged enough to appear as though it had been held many times over the years.

Paint the reverse side of the back piece using red paint.  I went with a metallic red, but really any red will do.  Don't worry about getting paint in all of the cracks as most of this will be covered and you won't see any patches.   Set the back pieces aside to dry.

While the back piece are drying take your photos(these are Tim Holtz found relatives, but you can use any old photos) and cover them with a layer of Vintage Beeswax embossing powder.

Once your powder is melted you get this wonderful look.  You can add lots of layers to make it smooth or even crack the finish.  This is a technique my fellow teammate Jennalee likes to use and you can see what that looks like here.

Emboss the heart overlay using Charred Gold embossing powder.  Adhere the photo and the overlay to the back panel.  See how the red just peeks out from behind.

Emboss your floral diamond with a very thin layer of Charred Gold powder.  Stipple on alcohol ink in slate, mushroom, and latte to age the finish.  

Add a metal flower on top of the diamond and then add a typed token with a bit of twine on that to complete your cover detail.  

I hope you have a great week!

Jess