Masculine Birthday Cards

Hi Stampers! Happy Thursday! The cards I am featuring today are 2 of the masculine birthday cards we will be making at my upcoming Stamp-a-Stack this Saturday. The theme of this month's class is birthday cards. We will be making cards for everyone- kids cards, masculine cards and of course feminine cards too. I always find masculine cards to be a bit of a problem for me. It's hard for me not to reach for my ribbon . I also don't think that I really have enough manly sets in my stamping stash. (Of course my hubby would soooooooo not agree with me on that one!)

These cards feature one of my new sets "On the Fly". Nathan thought these cards were great. He's big into fishing right now so these cards really hit the spot for him. On both cards I opted not to color in the main image. I didn't want to take away too much from it and thought it looked much more masculine when it wasn't colored in. The first card uses some of the Western Sky DSP from Stampin' Up! on the lower panel. The edges were sponged in Soft Sky to make the layered panels blend better. I really like this color scheme (Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, River Rock, & Whisper White). I think I will be using it on more cards in the future. I thought the phrase "Make a Wish" was perfect fit to use with this set since every man wishes to catch the big one! *lol* The inside of both cards have been stamped with "Happy Birhday".

The second card I made is a pretty simple card to do. It only uses one color of ink (Always Artichoke) and 3 colors of CS (Always Artichoke, Kraft, & Whisper White). Using the square punches from Stampin' Up! really helped in the quick assembly of this card. As a final touch I added the 2 copper brads on the main image panel. I was going to add some twine, but couldn't figure out just how to add it with this layout. The brads seemed to be a great solution. I used my mat pack to help line them up evenly. (I LOVE this tool!)

Hope you're all having a great day! Happy Stamping~

Stamp set: On the Fly, Cheesecloth (retired), A little Birthday Cheer
Ink: Always Artichoke, Basic Black, Close to Cocoa
Card stock: Blue Bayou, Soft Sky, River Rock, Whisper White, Always Artichoke, Kraft, Western Sky DSP
Other: Sponge Daubers, Copper brads, 1-3/8" Square Punch, 1-1/4" Square Punch