New Home Shaker

[If you're looking for my NBUS Challenge, click here.]

Happy Friday!!

Yes! Yes! It has happened again! We have managed to whoosh ourselves clean through another week to Friday!

I thought today we might hold a class on how to build a house. Now, don't get too becited, I don't mean like your dream home. I mean like a wee home of about three inches by three inches that can sit on a plot of card stock. And then, since I live in California, I thought it might be fun if we make our house on shaky earthquake card stock! Oh, c'mon, you gotta have a sense of humor about these things.

Just like in Archie's textural magazines, I'm going to show you the finished house first and then we'll do the structions.

How about a pretty little pink house? Don't pretend that you dinnit want one of these when you were five!

I have three friends I needed new home cards for all at the same time in different parts of the world. I thought it would be fun to make them shaker cards. I have to say I surprised myself when this idea came together because, of course, I don't own a little house-shaped die. What to do?

I woke up the hamster and here's what we did. Hopefully, you can chimprovise as necessary when you build yours!

1.  My particular square die set did not have one small enough for the "roof" of my house so I made it out of my SU square punch. I held it at an angle and made this cut:

2. Then I needed a slightly larger square for the body of the house and I found a square frame die from PTI that worked. 

It didn't matter that it was a frame because I just needed the outer opening it made. I laid it like you would for a house shape and held it in place with a piece of Washi tape. After cutting, it looked like this:

3. Next I laid a piece of acetate over the opening and taped it into place. Then I built a frame around my house with foam tape. I put my foam tape as close to the opening as I could so that my sequints didn't disappear beyond the depth of the opening after I was done.

I put a double layer of foam tape around my shaker card opening to allow for more "wiggle room" for the sequints to play in. Tip: make sure your foam layers line up prezackly or else your sequints can stick to the exposed tape. No fun shaking a shaker that doesn't shake! (Profound. Write that down.)

4. Then I put my sequints inside the hidey-hole.

5. Then I laid a piece of card stock over the taped shape to close in the sequints. I used the same color as I used for my card base because it would show through the back of the house window. (Aqua card shown below.)

Then I used more foam to pop the shaker front onto the colored card base. Walla! And Walla!

Oh, haha, here's the biggest tip:

If you are going to put a sediment onto the front of your shaker card anywhere, like I did with this solid gold sediment, I recommend that you stamp it immediately after you make your opening in whatever shape it's gonna be and NOT after you have made the entire shaker card. Sob.

 Here is the lineup of the other two cards I made:

You might notice that this b/w card doesn't have as many sequints playing in the pool. Cough. That would be because some of them are stuck down there in the bottom, adhered to the foam tape. At the time I made these, I didn't know the tip in step number 3, but now we all do. And hopefully the sendee won't even notice. Sssh.

So that was fun, right? Let me know if you ever make one. Unless it gives you fits for some reason and you hate me for it, then, of course, you don't need to share that with me. 

Challenges

You knew this was coming. 

• I'm entering my pink house in the photo portion of the Fusion Card Challenge "{Shiny Pink}."
• I'm entering my b/w house in the TIME OUT Challenges "Home Sweet Home" because it's most like the cool black and white wooden sediments; and also
• In Catherine Pooler's "Housewarming" to celebrate her new blog.

Make sure you click on the challenge links to find out all the details about the rules, sponsors, and prizes!

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New Friend's Corner

I know this is long, but I promised in my last post to introduce you to more delightful new friends you can play with:

The considerate and considerably talented Peggy whose gallery is "jasonw1" over at Splitcoast Stampers. If you look up the word sweetheart in the dictionary ~ um, I guess I should start saying at dictionary.com ~ you will see Peggy's picture. I'm not sure how long Peggy has been posting to SCS, but I can tell you that she has 520 images in her gallery! Be forewarned: do not look at more than 20 images at any one setting or your jaw will become permanently dislocated!

Nancy of The Summers on 49th Street. I think I will copy Nancy's own words in her profile, which tells you best about her: "My blog is dedicated to my grandmother, who always inspired my creativity. The story started in my first post, and I continue to write about my memories of 49th Street. I studied art in college, and my life's journey has blessed me with many creative interests. Here is where I share my love of arts and crafts, my new interest of stamping and card making, and various other ramblings." Her cards are fabulous, too!

Vicki of Stamp Smiles. Vicki has been blogging at Stamp Smiles since June of 2013. She is the mother of busy boys, but she still has time for all her creative activities of scrapbooking, card art, and cooking. She is a design team member who loves challenges and she has many awards under her belt for the stunning cards that she creates and shares with all of us!

Kathy of KT Krafts. Kathy has been blogging since February 2012. Kathy is a huge supporter of cardraising groups like Cards 4 Kids and Operation Write Home. She enjoys entering the card challenges and has won several awards. In addition to her card art, Kathy enjoys knitting and reading. Her expertise with techniques and her use of snippets in her cards, tags, and ATCs will inspire you!

Ineke de Graaff of Scraps &! Neke. Ineke is from the Netherlands and she has been blogging since February 2013. Like so many of us, Ineke started her blog in order to participate in challenges and share her cards with other card artists and, in turn, be inspired. She loves to participate in many of the same challenges that I do as she loves making CAS (clean and simple) cards. You will find out when you visit that she does them very well!

Thank you so much for joining, ladies, and welcome to the Playhouse!

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Postscript

Real quick. So my last post had an autumn card with a branch of autumn leaves and in a very artsy-fartsy move, I put one leaf down in the corner. Then this morning when Hammy was reading over the blog with his kibbles and bits, it occurred to him that if I had REALLY wanted to be artsy-fartsy, I should have removed one of the leaves from one of the branches. So here is my "before" and "after":

Unfortunately, when you want glue not to stick, it holds up a bowling ball, so removing the leaf left a smoodge. I sorta colored and smoodged the area more to make it look like I meant to do that. Sometimes it's better to leaf well enough alone!

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Reminder: The NBUS Challenge ends on September 25th. Please make sure you are checking the rules and a big thank you to all who have entered!! Since the entries are now over a hunnert, I have increased the prizes from five to ten so you have better odds of winning!

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Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower! Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!

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Mwah!