I had fun creating this Fall layout for Owen. The picture was taken at the cottage on Thanksgiving weekend 2020, and the weather was perfect for lots of playtime outside! Fun Fact: I have many, many pictures of Owen’s Mom and Uncle around this very tree, as they grew up, so this shot was extra special to me.

The foundation of the page came from the Leaf Pile patterned paper from the Glorious Autumn Kit paper pack by Reminisce. It was a perfect match for the wonderful colour we have on display each Fall in Muskoka. The title for the page is a cut file from Peartree Cutfiles called Fall Tags. You can find it here: https://www.peartreecutfiles.co.uk/product/fall-tags/.

I have some wonderful Fall shaker elements that matched the patterned paper perfectly, and this inspired me to make the tags into individual shaker boxes. The first step was to cut the Fall Tags cut file out twice – one for the top and one as a base for the bottom. I then very carefully punched small holes in one of the cut files to prepare it for hand stitching. I carefully stitched the full cut file using 5 separate colours of DMC floss to match the colours in the patterned paper (DMC 221, 921, 742, 3021, 347). Because the cut file had delicate borders, I only used 3 strands of each colour to stitch around the edges. Once the stitching was completed, I backed the leaves, mushrooms, and pumpkin, that can be seen around each letter. The following picture will help you see the detail of the completed top level.

To create the shaker pockets, I utilized the negative cutouts from the letters of the cut file as a guide and traced each onto a piece of acetate twice (one for the top and one for the bottom of each shaker pocket). I wanted the patterned base paper to show through the completed shaker tags, so the second piece of acetate was necessary to achieve this. The acetate letters were cut slightly larger than the tracing marks to ensure they completed covered each letter and securely held the shaker contents. Once the acetate was in place on the stitched title, I used Foam Sticky Strips from taylored expressions and carefully placed the strips around all edges of each tag and the banner at the top. Before removing the backing of the foam strips, I placed the Fall Shaker Elements in each letter. After the Shaker Elements were added, I removed the backing from the Foam Sticky Strips. I won’t lie, this was a very tricky and tedious step, and it required lots of patience, as the shaker elements kept moving around and liked to stick to the foam – but I feel the effort was worth the result! Once the backing was removed, I placed the second layer of letter acetate cutouts over the letters to secure everything nice and firm and to allow me to lift the cut file without losing any shaker elements. I chose to then adhere everything to the additional cardstock cutout of the cut file. This provided more stability to the overall completed cutout. I also adhered the small stitched centre to the letter A to complete the overall title. Here’s a couple more closeups to show you the completed shaker title.

Once the title was completed, the layout came together quite quickly. I adhered the photo and title first and then added several falling leaves to complement the patterned paper. These included No. 6 Forever Flowers from Prima Marketing Inc., which have been in my stash for years, and a few wooden diecut leaves. Finally, the two wooden slices were added to the bottom left of the picture.

I hope I’ve encouraged you to try a shaker pocket title on a future layout! Thanks for visiting, stay safe and Happy Scrapping!