Radiant Sunflowers Shaker Card | Stampin’ Up! Advent Calendar Door 3

We’re up to Door 3 of the Stampin’ Up! Advent Calendar, and this week’s little surprise immediately had me thinking shaker card!

Behind Door 3 was a gorgeous mix of sequins in copper flowers, blue, opal tones and gold butterflies. Rather than using them with the other Advent Calendar products, I decided to pull out something completely different – the Radiant Sunflowers Bundle

Because really, who says everything has to be used exactly as intended?

Mixing Your Stampin’ Up! Products

The warm coppery tones in the sequins made me think of Cajun Craze and autumn-toned sunflowers, while the blue sequins gave me the perfect excuse to do something a little different – blue leaves.

I stamped the large floral image in Secret Sea and coloured it with Stampin’ Blends, using Misty Moonlight for the leaves and Golden Glow for the flowers.

And yes, leaves can absolutely be blue! Are we not artists?

One of my favourite things about card making is taking colour cues from the products I already have in front of me. You don’t always need to follow traditional colours. Pulling that Misty Moonlight through the leaves helped tie the stamped image back to the sequins and made the whole card feel coordinated.

Quick Stampin’ Blends Colouring

This wasn’t meant to be a full colouring class, so I deliberately kept the colouring quick and loose.

For the leaves, I used just one Misty Moonlight Blend and created extra depth by layering the same colour over itself. If the second layer looks a little harsh at first, try using a flicking motion to soften the edges.

The sunflowers were coloured with Golden Glow, keeping the colouring quite rough and leaving a little white towards the tips of the petals. I then added extra depth around the flower centres before dotting Calypso Coral into the centres.

It’s a good reminder that colouring doesn’t have to take forever to be effective.

Making the Shaker Card

It had been a very long time since I’d made a shaker card – and apparently I’d forgotten just how long!

I die cut an arch from the Sunflower Fields Designer Series Paper, then added a Window Sheet behind the opening.

Here’s a handy little recycling tip too: I’ve kept Window Sheets from old stamp packaging over the years. If they have marks or residue on them, a little isopropyl alcohol can clean them up beautifully and give them another life on your cards.

Foam Adhesive Strips were added around the arch to create the shaker compartment before adding the Door 3 sequins.

My strips were rather old and determined to fall apart while I was using them, so perhaps another lesson from this week’s Live is: don’t leave your adhesive supplies sitting in the cupboard for years!

Despite the battle with the adhesive, the shaker still worked beautifully.

Those Finishing Touches

The large Radiant Sunflowers image sits across the front of the shaker window, with one of the gorgeous coordinating pots tucked underneath.

For the sentiment, I stamped “Enjoy” onto coordinating Designer Series Paper and heat embossed it in white. I also coloured some white twine with my Misty Moonlight Stampin’ Blend so it coordinated perfectly with the card.

And because those sequins really were too pretty to hide completely inside the shaker, I added a few individually to the card front as well.

If you have containers of sequins and embellishments that seem to last forever, make a shaker card! It’s a fabulous way to actually use them rather than admiring them in their containers for the next ten years.

Door 3 certainly turned into a fun one – and I love that we combined it with a completely different Stampin’ Up! collection.

Don’t forget to check back next week when we open Door 4 and see what we can create with that surprise!