Happy Birthday Shaker Card

So, this is a little story about a free gift at the CK Scrapbook convention.  It is no secret that they give away a prize to all or nearly all attendees to their crop nights.  This year, one of the gifts that Brandy won was a set of Queen and Co. Foam Front Shaker Kits.  She kept one of the three and I took the other two.

I decided to use up this stuff in the stash.  This card was made from the Window Foam Front Shaker Kit.  We've been pretty honest on this blog - plugging the products that we love because we use them over and over.  In the case of this shaker card kit - I can say I was decidedly underwhelmed!  Everything comes precut - the foam pieces , a die cut cardstock window to use on top of the foam, everything.  My beef with it all is the fact that the kit isn't precise.  I will own my own kind of control freak when it comes to crafting - things need to be symmetrical and neat.  This was neither.  You can see if you look close the imperfection in how the cardstock die cut (here I colored blue to match the theme of my card) matches to the white foam that creates the shaker window.  You might say that this is because the die cut is upside down or rotated 180 degrees.  You'd be wrong as I tried my level best to get that sucker on there straight.  Also - the outside rectangles - the foam piece, the die cut cardstock front and the acetate to cover the shaker windows - all were different sizes.  This required a trimming of all to match - but I didn't discover this until the shaker was together so I couldn't simply use my paper trimmer.  You can see the slight "roughness" on the upper right edge of the card where my trimming wasn't so exacting.

The price point is pretty great - running around $2.99 retail.  Not terribly expensive and for the novice or someone who doesn't own dies to use to make these kinds of shaker windows - maybe worth it.  However, I have made many shaker cards in the past.  Though my fronts are limited to the dies I own, the end result when I die cut myself is that everything fits together as I make it.  This was unnecessarily complicated (for me) by the necessary trim/adjustments that were required.

Still, a cute card was made and I intend to use this to great effect on a masculine birthday card need that I have.  So, all in all worth it from a giveaway standpoint, but I don't think I'd even spend $2.99 to buy the kit if I saw it on the shelf.  I have one more kit to use and will try to make that work soon just so I use both up without having the second and last one sitting in the stash for too long.

Hope your week is going well and that you are finding a reason to use that stuff in your stash.