Hello everyone!

My name is Erica and this is my first blog post as a designer for Studio Katia. I couldn’t be more excited to share this news with you! Having had to keep this a secret for a little while has been next to impossible as I have wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Not being able to share this with all my crafty friends has been a test of the wills, I tell you. I’m rubbish at keeping crafty secrets!

The day the package arrived with all the crafty goodies from the shop, I was on a high all day long. I squealed so much I scared my poor little doggies too! Inspiration hit me instantly but almost a bit too hard, I had so many ideas and had a hard time to settle on one and actually get started. First world problems or what?? So many ideas, so little time… You know how it is. Most crafty people do, it’s one of those things that make crafty time so precious.

Eventually, I managed to settle on one idea and it just had to be a shaker card. Consider this a fair warning: there will be a ridiculous amount of shaker cards coming your way!

I stamped up a flowery background stamp from MFT with VersaMark ink and heat embossed it with Ranger Ink white embossing powder. I love this technique as my style of water colouring is quite “swishy”, and with that I mean not very exact but still staying within the lines. I use lots of water and let the colours do their own thing. The embossed edges help the colours stay where I meant for them to go and not bleed all over the paper. It’s also a great way to get a natural look especially when it comes to colouring flowers which is definitely my favourite image to colour.

I have been borrowing a friend’s ZIG Kuretake Gansai Tambi – 36 COLOR SET to see if I want to add them to my growing hoard… stash… Erm, inventory of super important crafty stuff. I must admit that I wasn’t sold on them to begin with and was leaning more towards getting Zig Clean Colour markers BUT they have really grown on me and I have probably over-used them a little… Here is another warning: expect lots of water colours projects from me!

Once I had coloured the image with my chosen colours and let it dry, I cut out a large stitched square from it. This is from The Ton stamps, and it’s the largest stitched square die that I know of, it measures 5×5 inches/12,7×12,7cm. I thought it would be perfect to then use the Stitched Creative Nested Squares to cut out the sections I wanted to be the shaker part of the card. Once die cut I ended up with four pieces. The central panel I raised using foam tape (love that stuff and can’t live without it) and I used the same height for the frame of the card which also had a piece of acetate added to create the window for the shaker card. The two middle parts I glued to the base too, making sure I lined them up perfectly.

The fun part was choosing sequins and seeded beads to go inside the shaker part! I ended up using a similar colour palette that I used for the water colouring so they would match and highlight the colours rather than clash: 6mm Iridescent Marmalade Sequins (coming soon)  4mm Cupped Iridescent Delish. Berry Jam sequins went in there as well as Gold Foil Seed Beads for a bit of sparkle. Sparkle is never wrong, am I right??

I nearly left it without anything else on it but decided that I needed a sentiment to go with it too. To not cover up too much of the water colouring I used an inch-ish wide strip of vellum and I stamped Happy Birthday (from a stamp set not yet available but coming soon to the shop) on it with black Memento Ink which I also heat embossed with clear embossing powder to make it pop a little. And also to stop it smudging. I find that inks take a long time to dry on vellum and I have smeared more than one which is why I like heat embossing my sentiments.

Once the card was nice and sealed up, it’s time to give it a good shake to make sure those sequins and beads are well mixed. This is the best part but learn from my mistake here please people! It’s a VERY good idea to make sure the card is definitely securely sealed before doing this, I have myself had more than one sequin bomb go off due to the adhesive not sticking properly!

Well, here we have it: My first card on the Studio Katia blog! I hope you have enjoyed reading this and gotten some inspiration to make your own shaker card using these fabulous and unique dies. If you are not a fan of mixing your own sequins, there are lots of gorgeous mixes to choose from. You will be seriously spoil for choice here at Studio Katia.

Happy crafting and see you soon again!

Erica