
Hello Crafters!
Today’s card is an extra special one. Why? Because it’s for my little guy’s birthday and I hope he loves it.
I adored the Balloon Card Borders Honey Cuts as soon as I saw them. I knew I wanted to use them for Peanut’s card but he also loves shakers. After a little brain storming and a chat with a crafty friend I decided on Alcohol Inks as the answer.

The die is intended to give the look of a huge balloon, so big that it’s outside the card frame. The problem with this look for a shaker card is the die leaves the top and sides completely open. Normally for a shaker closing off all the sides isn’t a problem because all the foam tape is hidden behind the top piece of cardstock. In this case I wanted to use the acetate to create the balloon which would show any foam tape I put behind it.

I needed a way to both color the balloon and hide my foam tape. Alcohol inks to the rescue! I used a combination of both regular alcohol inks and alcohol pearls to color the acetate. Alcohol pearls are more opaque thanks to the metallic properties so I concentrated those around the edges where the foam tape would be.
It took a little bit of time playing around with the inks to get the look I wanted but eventually we got there. The balloon is the focal point but there’s a whole party going on with this card. I stamped and masked my images from Happy BEEday to create a small scene under the balloon.

It’s not perfect and you can still kind of see the tape if you’re looking for it but it’s not obvious enough that I had an issue with the way it looks. What do you think?
You can see the entire process in the video below.
I hope this card gives you some fun and inspiration to give this a try.
Thanks for stopping by!
