Welcome to Chapter Three

Welcome to Chapter Three: Taking Life One Page at a Time -- a space to blog about those things that keep this retired gal from getting into ...

Friday, October 16, 2015

If at First You Don't Succeed....

... Well. according to a Peanuts quote that used to sit on my desk at school, the answer was take a nap. And, while I'm a huge proponent of naps, I needed more than a good nap to make my seashell shaker card work.

A Seashell Shaker Card?!

A number of years ago, I came across a bag of the tiniest seashells from Pottery Barn on summer clearance. At the time, I had no idea what I would do with these shells. But, my love of all things beachy is too great to pass up these tiny treasures.

Now, years later, I found myself wanting to make a beach-inspired birthday card for a friend who loves trips to the ocean as much as I do. So, I remembered those little shells and wondered if they could be small enough to work in a shaker card. The pic at the right shows their size compared to some sequins.

Turns out that was the easy part. It actually took three tries to make a card that captured our mutual love of the ocean.


Card #1: Wah, Wah

I knew I wanted to use a beautiful sheet of blue paper from DCWV's Sweet Mat Stack collection. And, I knew I wanted to include a quote from a piece that hangs in the master bedroom. I thought I knew I wanted to use a Stamper's Best fishing net background stamp on kraft (SU crumb cake).


Wow -- what a disappointment! It was pretty much what I set out to create, but felt so flat. But, I really liked the seashell shaker component with the computer-generated sentiment printed directly on the DCWV paper.

So, I walked away for a day or two to let my creative juices replenish...

Card #2: Close, but no Cigar

For the second attempt, I decided to go with crisp white -- embossed with a swiss dot folder -- on the same shade of Distress Ink core blue paper as the border of the shaker component, with a white ribbon as the final embellishment.



This felt like it was getting closer, but wasn't there yet. So, I stepped away a second time, thinking about how much I loved the shaker component and wondering what I could do to make it feel like a more organic part of the card.
 
Card #3: The Charm!!!

My AHA moment was that I loved the DCWV paper.

As it turned out, I had one piece of it left. I felt it was pretty important to line up the pattern inside the shaker component with this other sheet of paper. Moreover, I wanted to make use of the glittery swirls embedded in the paper. The pressure was on to get the cut of this one sheet of paper just right.  :)


DCWV Sweet Mat Stack; Distress Ink core; SU crumb cake
computer-generated text
Pottery Barn seashells; Mark Richards gems
Really Reasonable Ribbon ribbon
Turns out the crumb cake made a great base, enhancing the color of the shells. And, placing the ribbon running underneath the shaker component makes for a much strong focal point. Success!!!

My only regret are one or two minor imperfections in the acetate -- from reworking the card so many times. But, given the end result, I'm willing to live with those.  :)

Linking this up to the current SOS I Can See Clearly Challenge to use acetate on your card/project.

Parting Thoughts

The Creepy Crawler Cards in Envy challenge ends on Sunday, and the Words 2 Scrap By Fight Like a Girl breast-cancer-awareness challenge runs until October 28. Hope you'll join us for one or both challenges.

Have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping and happy scrappin'!




4 comments:

  1. I love seeing that other people struggle like I do! Did you actually re-make that shaker each time? So. much. work. But the end result was worth it - gorgeous card.

    BTW, I collect mini shells each time I go to Sanibel, which used to be once a year. I don't need more, but I can't pass up the perfection of the mini shells. Now I want to make a shell shaker! Oh, and if you even need shells, I'm your gal! :)

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  2. i love seeing the evolution of your idea and the way you can really analyze each card and see what you like & dislike about it to make the next one even stronger! (for the record i think ALL of these are great, but YEAH, the stripey paper and the landscape orientation really do MAKE that third one!!! thanks for SHOPPING YOUR (clear!) STASH with us this week! ♥

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  3. Ohhhhh Sybrina this is awesome!! Fab job! Thanks for joining the Shopping Our Stash crew for our "I Can See Clearly" challenge!!

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  4. Great process, and great, well deserved shout out from SOS!

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