To Rose, From Rocky and Zeke - My First Shaker Card!

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Quick reminder about my Spring Fling 2015 class starting on March 23. You will be able to register next week. Since this class is free, I do have to approve registrations. How many of you want to wade through spammers peddling Viagra? I didn't think so 🙂

I know that we will all agree that the March My Favorite Things Stamps release was fabulous. Just when you think they can't possibly come up with anything more amazing, they do!

The focus on pets, flowers, friendship and of course, Pure Innocence, was nothing less than phenomenal – not to mention the 5 brand new delish colors now bringing their total colors in ink and paper to a whopping 61 for all of us color lovers out there! Wow! And, we have our Blueprints Die-amics and a new Tag Die-Namics too!

I must credit Vera Yates with this card. It's my first shaker card ever. Shaker cards are so trendy right now that it's crazy. Sequins are so trendy now that it's crazy. Now let's add new microbeads to the sequin shaker trend card and you have WOW! I saw Vera's card and knew I had to make one like it. I was only concentrating on how to make a shaker card so I did it in a weird way ignoring everything I had learned in the countless videos I had watched and make my shaker card the "Cindy way." I love how it turned out. I used some brand new luscious colors from My Favorite Things Stamps of After Midnight and Blue Breeze. I did some heat embossing and an awful lot of elbow grease inking with my mini Tim Holtz ink blenders using the new Blue Breeze Premium Dye Ink Pad on my panel that I used emboss resist with the Small Brick Background stamp with Versamark Ink and fine white embossing powder. I sponged around the edges and then took a Swiffer to wipe off the excess ink on my emboss resist. I also used the Stitched Circle Die-Namics to cut my circle out and Blueprints 18 for my sentiment. I use Blueprints on every single card that I make. My Favorite Things has a Printable Resource section on their blog at cardchallenges.com where you can print out 4 examples and more of every single Blueprints Die-Namics and the new Tag Blueprints Die-Namics too! Blueprints are your MUST go to for any card and the design team members will vouch for that. I have a special affinity for the stitched Blueprints or stitched dies that I absolutely love, which will finish off any design.

Considering this was my first shaker card, I had to case Vera using her sketch and overall card design except for the colors that I used. I had to concentrate on not blowing a shaker card! My Favorite Things carries their own microbeads and I used the Clear and Wave colors by American Crafts that are in the My Favorite Things store. My various colors of blue sequins are from Pretty Pink Posh. I adhered them directly to the card stock of my window card and let the beads shake away. It's such a fun card!

I made this card for my best friend of 38 years, Rose. We lived together from May 2013 to July 2014, and we are looking forward to putting back together our little family that's so full of love, and our cats, Rocky and Zeke, and of course, Bella, my little Dachshund. When Rose and I moved in together, our biggest problem wasn't how 2 very independent barely 50-something women would get along as we were also college roommates; it was how our male diva cats were going to get along. They B-slapped each other here and there, destroyed furniture and marked their territory on everything they could in sight, but something happened along the way of us becoming our own little family. It was a great family and a family full of love. A lot of love. It was enough love to keep my extremely social butterfly youngest daughter at home for 10 days straight, except to go to school, and off her phone. Rose and Bailey bonded. Bailey is not a morning person and neither is Rose. I wake up talking so Rose takes Bailey to school the first day and looks at her and says, "I'm not a morning person." Bailey replied, "Neither am I." They sat in silence to school every day and were both perfectly content. My youngest son, Scott, is so OCD that if Bailey runs her hands through her hair and he sees a strand come out, he will pull over, make her get out of the car and find the strand of hair and toss it out of the car. Uh, yeah, that's my Moose. My oldest son isn't much better when it comes to OCD – and he was the one making fun of me matching up kitty faces on the cat food cans when I put them away. Looks like the apples didn't fall far from the tree boys.

I rarely color animals. I tried to make this cat look like Rocky. He has whiskers coming a foot off of his face, seriously. He meows a lot too. Rocky is gray, black and orangish so I colored him with a light wash of orange first and then added in various grays. If anything, I'm on the light side because I didn't want to blow it and spend hours coloring a cat.

Just wait until you see the MFT dog stamp set. I'm breaking that out today. I think they know I have a Dachshund and put one in every single one of their stamp sets that have a dog.

Thank you Vera for the wonderful inspiration and know that your card will really bless my best friend.

I hope to see ALL of you in my Spring Fling 2015 class and at the last second, I decided to add a few more guest designers. Oops. If you are interested in being a guest designer, I still have a few slots open. I just need your project, a supply list, and a video would be great, although not required. We have some AMAZING projects just for you.

Again, thank you for stopping by today to visit me and make every day count. Life is so precious so make every single day count. When you go to bed every single night, you should be able to write down one act of random kindness that you did for another. That was my only "resolution" this year. I don't make resolutions. I don't have to. I set goals. But, that one thing to make a difference in somebody's life daily, was very important for me to do.