Masculine Birthday Card by My Favorite Things

Hi folks. I decided to take a break from life yesterday and make this very cool masculine birthday card. I started out making my Clean and Simple Stamping Blog (Fall to Layout, FTL303, design team card. I was putting away some stamps and saw some My Favorite Things July 2014 release items still on my desk so I had my stamp set and other items ready to go before the sketch. I gravitated to the Celebrate You stamp set and Die-Namics. I always do it the other way around of looking at my sketch and then picking out product, so this was a real challenge for me with the colors and sketch. I somehow had to marry them and I think I did by making a very cool masculine birthday card!

I also killed 3 birds with one stone of my above-mentioned design team work, My Favorite Things Monthly Color Palette Challenge 8 consisting of Fuse Green, Kraft, Nightshift Blue and Orange Fizz. I used Black Licorice Hybrid Ink Pad as my neutral. All of my ink colors used are the Hybrid Ink Pads. This card is made using strictly My Favorite Things products.

I started out with a Sweet Tooth A2 size tent card stock as my base. I also die-cut the present using the Celebrate You Die-Namics. The "Happy" comes from Celebrate Die-Namics and the "Birthday" was stamped onto Kraft card stock with a tight margin and I used a 1" square punch by Stampin' Up! to get the perfect banner ends on each side of the sentiment.

I stamped the bottom of the present with Night Shift Blue Hybrid Ink and for added dimension, I used Stampin' Dimensionals by Stampin' Up! that are approximately 1/16th of an inch in dimension. I stamped the bow using Orange Fizz Hybrid Ink and adhered that to the top of my present using foam dots that were 1/4th of an inch, so there's a significant difference with my dimension. Tying a bow using Hemptique Crafter's Cord Roll to close the gap between the present and the bow and it was the perfect embellishment to keep it masculine. I love this cord. It's so incredibly easy to work with and doesn't fray at all. I will need to check out their website to see if there are other colors. It's not too thin and not too thick. It's just perfect. You get 205 feet per roll which is 68 yards! I think I'll have this stuff forever. Get the price point too – $2.99.

I then grabbed some Fuse Green card stock and die-cut out my "Happy" sentiment using the Celebrate Die-Namics. To add some additional texture to the card and die-cut, I pulled out my Happy Birthday background stamp and inked it up with Green Fuse Hybrid Ink for some tone-on-tone that is subtle and perfect. The "Birthday" sentiment is described above, but to get the curve to the banner, which is just perfect for this card, I used a Stampin' Up! Bone Folder as the thin edge is perfect for doing this, to breakdown the card stock to get my wave. I added a bit of Scor-Tape in the middle to adhere it to the card along with a few Stampin' Up! Mini Glue Dots (love them!) to adhere part of the banner to the present. I let the right side of the banner float. Last, but certainly not least as it's the very first thing I did to make my card, was to ink up a rubber stamp with Kraft Hybrid Ink from The Greeting Farm that's is just a splotchy image that anchors everything.

I hope you enjoy this card and derive some inspiration from it. I had a good time making it because it was just for fun. When you have a sketch and color palette all ready for you, all you have to do is get the right products out and start creating OR you can do what I did because my sketch and color palette to me, was a bit difficult to figure out, is to challenge yourself, and that is always fun too because you have to think out of your box; however, this card does remain clean and simple.

Thank you so much for stopping by to visit me today and don't forget to sign up for my Holiday Parade 2014 Card Class! God bless you and have a great day!