Guest Designer Lyndsey shares her gorgeous Heart Shaker Card!

Hello everyone, Lyndsey here and I am so thrilled to have been asked to be a Guest Designer for February.  Today I am sharing a project here on the blog using some of the fabulous items that I was so lucky to receive. I can't tell you how excited I was when my parcel arrived and I saw the adorable Smitten Kittens stamp and die set along with a selection of beautiful dies, I was absolutely in my element!

So onto my card, the stamps and dies in my package were just perfect for Valentines Day makes and as soon as I saw the Horizontal Heart Aperture Slimline Add on Die Set I knew it was just perfect for a shaker card (this girl loves a cute shaker!).

So I started by cutting my trio heart die from red card - now from the name you will see that this die is an add on die and is made to coordinate with other slimline dies and only cuts out the heart apertures, so I used a standard rectangular slimline die from my stash to actually cut out the panel. If you have the Slimline Scalloped Trio Circle Nesting Die set this would be perfect for this. You can't really see it in the photo but I did go round the edge of the panel with Candied Apple Distress Ink using one of the Blender Brushes (oh my these are fabulous!!) I then cut a slightly larger panel from a pinky coral colour card so that I would end up with a mat of colour showing all around.

To make my shaker element I stuck a piece of acetate to the back of the hearts panel,  then added foam tape all around the edges and between each heart to create 3 window sections. I filled each section with a selection of sequins and then cut a slightly smaller piece of white card which I added to the back of the panel to enclose my shaker sections. I attached the panel onto the larger pink panel and the adhered the whole piece onto a pre made DL card blank.

The cute kitties were stamped using Memento Ink in Tuxedo Black and I used Spectrum Noir alcohol markers for my colouring. I used the following colours (listed in order of lightest to darkest).

Kittens

main body - BG1, BG3, BG5, BG7

ears - C3, C2.

Chocolate Boxes & Red Balloon - CR8, DR2, DR3

Ribbons & Pink Balloons - C3, C2, C6.

Chocolates - TN5, TN7, TN9.

Once all coloured I used the Coordinating Dies to cut out all my images (these make the job so much quicker & easier than having to fussy cut- well worth investing in the dies) and then adhered them to my card using tacky glue adding a kitty to each heart aperture.

I stamped the sentiment "happy chocolate day" from the stamp set and added this to the top right hand corner of my panel.

To finish my card off I took the Lots of Love Slimline Die and cut out a few hearts using a black and white striped paper, I added 3 of these to my panel just to give it a little pop of something extra and finally added a few randomly placed Clear Drops to complete my card.

I really enjoyed using the Smitten Kittens set for my project and hope that my shaker card inspires you to make one of your own, thank you so much for having me on the blog today. You will find this card and a few others I have made with the Smitten Kittens set over on my Instagram page @the_crafty_blonde

Lyndsey