With Autumn in the air, I decided that my next shaker card made using the Fuse tool would have to have a leaf (or two) in it!
I chose a leaf patterned paper from the now retired Color Me Autumn DSP and adhered it to a piece of Crushed Curry card stock to give it strength.
I then used the Leaflet Framelits Dies to cut a maple leaf in the bottom left. I used the same die to create my shaker from a piece of a page protector. I filled it with an assortment of sequins, including some from Pretty Pink Posh.
As I created the shaker for this card, I realized that there was a bit of a learning curve for the Fuse tool.While my first shaker with the Fuse had been a straight-sided window, a leaf shape was much more complicated!
As I tried to trace the outside of the leaf die, I found it very tricky to fuse all the little angles of the die. It was then that I decided that my first piece of advice for the Fuse Tool was:
1. Don't choose complicated shapes. With that said, there is a caveat to this piece of advice; though a die shape maybe somewhat complicated, your fusing doesn't have to be ie. because the fused edge of the shaker will be generally hidden from view, you can fudge the fuse line a bit so that it is not so complicated to create.
I also had to create the leaf shaker a second time because the first time I was actually trying to fuse the INSIDE of the leaf die! I found it somewhat difficult to wrap my mind around where the die would cut the shape and where I would fuse it. This brings me to my second tip:
2. Die cut the inside of the die; fuse the outside of the die. The fused area of the shaker has to be OUTSIDE of the area where the opening is die cut, providing you with an area to adhere to the surrounding card and allowing you to keep the actual fused line hidden.
As I played more and more with creating the leaf shaker, my Fuse was still plugged in but sitting idle. when I used it to fuse again I actually ended up melting my plastic instead of fusing it! :( So my third tip becomes:
3. Unplug the Fuse when you are not planning to use it for awhile. On my iPhone, I have Siri set a timer for 15 minutes when I first plug in the Fuse so that I get it heated to its optimum heat setting. When I unplug it, I use the stopwatch function on my phone until I am once again ready to work with the Fuse tool. I then set a timer for the elapsed time on the stopwatch (or 15 minutes if it has been longer than 30 minutes) to reheat the Fuse.
4. While the Fuse is plugged in, use a heat safe container in which to hold it. I found that the little stand included with the tool to be somewhat useless. Because of the cord is so short, trying to rest the Fuse on its stand seems to be a very wobbly accident waiting to happen! Instead, I use a squat little canning jar to rest the Fuse in when I'm not holding it. Makes me feel a whole lot safer!
After my shaker was created, I taped it in place on the back of the card stock and then adhered the matte using mounting tape to a Crushed Curry card base. I used a Project Life journaling pen to create a stitched line around the leaf shaker.
The sentiment was die cut from Cajun Craze card stock using the Hello You thinlits and glued in place using the Fine Tip Glue Pen (my newest favorite adhesive!).
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