Growing In Unity: Day 2 ~ Seed Bead Shaker Card

Welcome to Day 2 of my week as the Growing In Unity Girl for the fabulous Unity Stamp Co.!!  If you missed yesterday's post, be sure to check it out and leave a comment every day for your chance to win 25 random stamps from Unity!  Yes, I said 25 FREE STAMPS!!  There will be TWO winners at the end of the week.  Woo hoo!!

For today I wanted to do a bright, summery, cute shaker card!  The adorable little pandas from the Plenty of Pandas stamp set were just begging to be used on a peek-a-boo card and who am I to deny these little guys what they want?? 

 

I used Cricut Design Space to design an A2 card front with three 1.5"x1.5" square windows.  I used this pattern and my handy dandy Cricut Explore to cut the card front out of Neena Solar White 110 lb cardstock as well as a piece of white craft foam.  I prefer using craft foam to add dimension to my shaker cards because it saves me the trouble of piecing together foam tape.  This is especially useful when using seed beads or other super tiny shaker material that will escape through even the smallest of cracks.  I also love that I can cut it with my Cricut and my Big Shot.

Once I had my card front cut out I began working on building the card.  I stamped three of the pandas using Black Licorice ink from Lawn Fawn.  This ink is super crispy and I love it!  I fussy cut the pandas and then colored the white edges with a black brush tip marker to give them that perfectly perfect cut look (and trust me, they are far from perfectly perfect!).  I used my paper trimmer to cut three little squares of patterned cardstock from the Lawn Fawn 6x6 Springtime paper pad, as well as trim a piece of transparency to 4"x5.25". 

 

Before adhering my transparency to the back of my card front I arranged all those little pandas peeking out of the windows and adhered them using my tape runner.  I wanted them to be tucked behind the card front but in front of the transparency.  I then adhered the transparency and stamped the Chunky Hello Itty Bitty in three colors of Lawn Fawn Ink that corresponded to the papers I chose (Wild Rose, Freshly Cut Grass, and Sunflower Inks).  

Using my card front as a guide, I adhered the patterned papers to the card base to show through the little windows.  I then used Tombow Mono Multi (very sparingly) to glue my craft foam to my card front. 

•  A little tip for using the craft foam:  after cutting it with your die cutting machine, use your craft knife or scissors to trim it slightly smaller than your card front to avoid having it show through the shaker window. 

I filled the three windows with clear seed beads and then used the same liquid adhesive to glue the card base onto the card front.  I couldn't resist adding some Wink of Stella and Glossy Accents to the sentiments and the Pretty Pink Posh Sprintime mix in 6 mm and 4 mm matched my color scheme perfectly!

I hope you enjoyed this bright and cheery shaker card!  Don't forget to comment below for your chance to win Unity goodies!!  Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you tomorrow for Day 3 of Growing In Unity and a pop-up gift card holder tutorial!