Apologies for being absent for so long, things have been rather busy!
 
Earlier this year, I entered the Cardmaker of the Year 2021 competition run by Practical Publishing and Craftworld. I made one of my see through spinning shaker cards, a floral layered card and a 3d floral shadowbox picture.

​​I was really chuffed with my entries, but didn't think for one minute that I would win. But I was wrong!!  I received a call from Practical Publishing letting me know I was one of the four winners, and I could have fallen off my chair! 
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Since the winners were announced, there has been a wonderful array of prizes arriving, dies, stamps, stencils, digital files, paper and card, a Silhouette Portrait machine, a storage unit, adhesives, craft books, subscriptions to The Papercraft Society and Essential Craft Series.  So many gorgeous new toys to play with!  And on top of all the fabulous prizes, I get to work with the design team on my favourite papercrafting magazines!!  So far, I have completed three commissions and I'm working on a fourth, so you will hopefully be seeing some of my work in future issues of Die Cutting Essentials and Simply Cards & Papercraft. 

Over the coming months, I plan to make projects with prizes from each sponsor to share with you all. So watch this space, my first project will include dies received from Pinkfresh Studios!

Today, I'd like to share with you a card I made recently for my husband on our 1st wedding anniversary.

I'd never made a spinner card, nor had I made a shaker card, but, being the stubborn person that I am, I decided to try to combine the two and see what happened!

​I used my set of Sizzix nested heart dies to cut the aperture in the card blank, and to cut the frames for the aperture and the shaker, and to cut the acetate windows. The shaker is double sided, so two windows, two frames and two backing hearts. The blue, pink and silver card I used is Stardream pearlescent card, a lovely double sided card with a sparkly pearl finish.

I constructed the two shaker hearts in the usual way with a backing heart, double sided foam tape (ensuring no gaps for the confetti to escape through), Nuvo confetti Bluebell Hearts, acetate window, and finished with a frame to cover the foam tape visible through the acetate. 

Having got this far, I had my base card and shakers, and needed some way to suspend the double sided shaker in tne aperture. With my reel of invisible thread AWOL (clearly doing a great job at being invisible!), I searched my thread collection and found some fab bead weaving thread in silver grey. It's strong and doesn't stretch, so seemed a good option. 

I used strong double sided tape to stick the thread to the centre back of one of the shakers and added another layer over the thread, plus extra tape over the back of the shaker. I then stuck the other shaker over the top, resulted in a double sided shaker ready for suspending in the aperture of the card.  To suspend the shaker, I used double sided tape to attach the thread securely to the back of the aperture. At this point, I realised I'd need a piece of card with a heart aperture to stick to the back of the card front, next time I'll sort that out when making the card blank!  Finally, I added the blue frame to the card front, plus the blue bands top and bottom with tiny heat embossed sentiments. The last item to add was a pink heart to fit inside the card, exactly behind the aperture in the card front. I stamped and heat embossed Happy 1st Anniversary in the centre of the heart before gluing it down. Here's a photo of the finished card laid flat so you can see how the pink heart sits behind the aperture.

I hope you've enjoyed seeing how I put together my first spinning shaker card! Thank you for stopping by, hope to see you again soon :)