How to Make a Shaker Box for Scrapbooking Pages

Do you know how easy it is to make a shaker box? All you need is some card stock, a square or rectangle of acetate (just cut up a page protector), some strong glue or adhesive, tiny items to put inside the box, and mounting tape. You might also use embellishments or scrapping paper to trim your finished box.

Shaker boxes add charm and user interactivity to a scrapbooking page, a hard made greeting card, an altered book or any many other types of paper craft projects. As the name suggests, you create a small, box-like object with a see-through window. Inside the box, you place tiny items that will move around when the box is "shaken."

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Therefore, how many words is a video worth? The video below takes you step by step through the process of creating a shaker box.

One of the loveliest shaker boxes I have seen was built into the front of a hand made card. The shaker box was double matted with card stock in pleasing colors. A rectangle of vellum was placed over top of the shake box, held in place with gold brads at each corner. The shaker box contained tiny gold beads that matched the gold brads. The vellum had a hole torn from the middle, in what was roughly a heart shape. The gold beads showed slightly through the vellum but came into full display when shaken.

This was a truly beautiful card. It was not the "cute" style that we often see with shaker boxes.

Shaker boxes become even more charming when they are incorporated into the layout's theme.

Does your layout feature rain? How about making your shaker box into an umbrella stand? Make a long, rectangular box. Fill with clear micro beads, which are somewhat reminiscent of rain. Using paper piercing, create umbrellas that extend from the box.

Does your layout feature a garden theme? Make your embellishment into a window box or stand for paper pierced garden tools. Fill it with seed beads -- or even real seeds. If you use an organic filler, however, you must be sure to cold laminate the inside of the shaker box to protect the rest of your layout from rot. Clear shelf liner will work if you don't have a laminator,

It's a bowling tournament? Make a bowling ball. It's tricky to assemble the mounting tape in a curved shape, but there is a work around. Make the actual shaker box angular, but cover with a round shape of card stock in which you have cut a round window. Refer to the pot of gold shaker box at the top of the page to see how this works.

When you start "thinking outside the box", you'll be creating wonderfully expressive shaker boxes to enhance your scrapbooks or other paper crafts.

Leave me a comment and tell me about your projects.