Balloon Shaker Card....and a little about my Photos

Hi there

Just popping in to share a card I made for my Sister-in-Law who celebrated her birthday earlier this week.

I love using this stitched window die for shakers and have used it twice before, here and here.

I started with a panel slightly smaller than my card base, die cut the window and stamped the sentiment below.  I then marked the card base, through the window with a pencil so I knew where the stamping area would be.  Some acetate was adhered to the reverse of the window.  I then simply stamped some balloons, sprinkled some shaker bits over the stamped area, added some foam strips to my panel and then adhered to the base, trapping the 'bits' inside.

Materials used:

• Die: MFT Die-namics - Peek-a-boo window
• Stamps: Altenew - Beautiful Lady; Papermania - Relations (serif); Clearly Besotted - Let's Party
• Ink: Versafine - Onyx Black; Versa Color - Peony, Lagoon Blue, Hyacinth
• Shaker Elements: Cosmic Shimmer - Glitter Jewels in Iced Snow; mini silver stars from stash

My Photos

You may have noticed a couple of additions to the photos in this post.  I've been wanting to add some staging to my pics for a while to make them a bit more interesting so have recently bought a few props.  For some time now I've been looking out for a wooden board of some kind to stand my cards on and finally found one last weekend, just by chance when I was in Dunelm Mill of all places.  I've also now bought a selection of artificial flowers and mini succulents so hope to start using those soon.  These photos just have the wooden board and a mercury glass vase with some artificial hydrangeas which I have in my lounge.

This is where I take all my card photos, on a cupboard in an alcove of my lounge using my wallpaper as a background as it's a neutral colour and has some texture to it.  I use a daylight lamp for all my pictures as I mostly craft in the evenings and this takes away the 'yellow' of the artificial light.  I have recently bought an LED desk lamp for illuminating my work area but it's a pain to keep moving it so will probably continue using my existing one for my photography.

So, nothing fancy, and I don't have an expensive camera nor would I know how to use one.  All my photos are taken using my Samsung mobile phone and I use free online software, PicMonkey to tweak any exposure issues and add my watermarks.  It works for me and hopefully with the help of my new props I can make my photos better.

That's all for today...Happy Sunday!