Hello everyone! It’s Zinia here and this week we are featuring the beautiful Sweater Weather collection here at the American Crafts blog.
I don’t do a lot of themed pages but when I see collections as adorable as this one, I can’t resist. Sweater Weather is a great combination of traditional and whimsical patterns mixed with the most adorable little doodled elements. I’m madly in love with all the little animals that appear through this collection.
So with all these beautiful supplies at hand, I decided to create a couple shaker cards, inspired by the winter snow globes. To build the shaker cards I cut down my card bases, two pieces of pattern paper that would be the backgrounds of my shaker elements (these were a tiny bit smaller than the card base to leave a border around the shaker panel) and two pieces of white cardstock at the same size as the pattern paper.
The two white pieces need to be cut into frames. You can do that with a ruler and a craft knife but I personally prefer using the We R Memory Keepers Frame Punch Board. It cuts perfectly shaped frames without any struggle. In any case make sure to keep the inner parts of the frames cause we can use them later on.
To turn the frames into our shaker windows we need to stick a piece of plastic at their back side. It’s nice to use a thick sheet of plastic to keep everything safe and sturdy but even if you don’t have that, a piece of packaging can still do the trick. Make sure to use strong adhesive to keep the plastic piece in place.
Now that the shaker window is ready, we can start building the cards. To add more depth, I decorated the background pieces of pattern paper using a few ephemera pieces and little elements I fussy cut from the papers of this collection. I also added a few decorations on top of the shaker window focusing around the edges so I won’t cover a big part of the background.
Once the decorating part is over, it’s time to assemble the shaker panel. I covered the back side of the shaker window with foam tape, making sure to hide it behind the frame and the other elements. The foam tape needs to fill the whole area so the shaker filling won’t leak.
Speaking of the shaker filling, to create the snow globe effect, I punched out some white confetti to fill my shaker panels. In this step you can use the inner parts of the frames so you won’t waste any scraps.
I used the We R Memory Keepers Confetti punch to easily create my confetti but you can also use any other tiny circle punch you have in your stash. Once the confetti is in the card, adhere everything together and the shaker panel is ready!
I decided to cover the front on my card bases with some textured cardstock in red and green to add a colorful border around the shaker panel. Just stick the shaker on the card base and the shaker cards are finished!
I really hope you got inspired with this little project to create something beautiful with the Sweater Weather collection. It’s definitely one of the most adorable holiday collections every! Until next time, happy crafting.
Supplies: SWEATER WEATHER CARDSTOCK STICKERS (343454), SWEATER WEATHER EPHEMERA CARDSTOCK DIE-CUTS (343459), SWEATER WEATHER DOUBLE-SIDED CARDSTOCK 12"X12" Winter Wonderland (343447), SWEATER WEATHER DOUBLE-SIDED CARDSTOCK 12"X12" Cozy (343448), SWEATER WEATHER DOUBLE-SIDED CARDSTOCK 12"X12" Bundle Up (343450), SWEATER WEATHER DOUBLE-SIDED CARDSTOCK 12"X12" Twinkle (343452), AMERICAN CRAFTS VARIETY CARDSTOCK PACK 12"X12" Primaries (376982), WE R DIY PARTY PAPER PUNCH Confetti (660779), FRAME PUNCH BOARD (663006)