Little Tangles Challenge # 71

It was my birthday yesterday and I had a wonderful day. I really wanted to spend the whole day crafting but after school drop offs, washing, vacuuming and dog walking there wasn't much time left. But....I was determined to try out a card design I thought of while walking the dogs the day before (really must take a pad and pen with me as its where I get most of my ideas....). I didn't think it was going to work but after 2 hours of fiddling, I had a result!!

I love to make shaker cards and I'm always trying to find ways to make them a bit more interesting. I don't own many Neat and Tangled dies unfortunately but really wanted to use one of them to enter the Little Tangles challenge. It turned into a real marathon of firstly working out where to cut and then dealing with all those micro beads but I'm am over the moon with how it turned out:

 Now you can see why it was fiddly!!! I really wanted to show a broken heart but spent ages trying to work out where to cut the die-cut so that most of the triangle spaces were still intact to hold micro beads. My brain was ready to explode but I did the best I could.

So, to do this I firstly used a new product here in New Zealand. Its A4 sheets of double sided adhesive by Rosies Studio. I thought this would be good to try it out so I cut a piece of white CS big enough to fit the heart, adhered it to one side of the sheet and cut it out. I ran it thru my Cuttlebug a few times with my new metal shim and it worked a treat. I removed the backing and adhered a piece of acetate and cut away the overhanging edges. I then cut the heart along my planned route.

Next I cut a piece of white foam, adhered it to the adhesive backing and run it thru with the die. I then realised I really need it on both sides of the foam so I had to use some Glossy Accents to adhere the foam to the acetate side. Before I did this I had to cut the foam into its separate halves. Once this had dried I poured in the micro beads, trying to keep the colour separate which didn't work completely but oh well. I then removed the adhesive backing from the foam and pushed a piece of white CS on to each piece. Holding my breath my picked them both up and tah dah, the beads didn't fall out!!! 

I trimmed off the overhanging CS from each half. I cut a panel of white CS slightly smaller than the card front and popped it up on foam tape. I then adhered the 'broken heart' in place. The sentiments were stamped with black ink, fussy cut and put on foam tape as well. I can't believe it worked!!!

As well as the Faceted Heart Die, the sentiment stamps are also from Neat and Tangled 'Everyday Labels'. The micro beads are from Papervine.

I'm going to link this to the  Stamplorations CAS Challenge - August where I haven't used the optional twist of gold.

Will also link to the Happy Little Stampers Challenge - Anything Goes with Dies - August 

I'm going to take this card with me to the Wellington Papercraft Show to show people how to use the micro beads we will be selling. I actually better start packing too and make sure I have a spare bag of Peanut M&M's to take with me for energy. Flying out tomorrow (Friday) morning at 9.25am, will spend the day setting up and then the show is Saturday/Sunday. I can't wait to be surrounded by fellow crafters again!!

Take care
Shona