Last weekend, I had to make FOUR masculine birthday cards!!! I was sitting there with all these beautiful new products with flowers and baskets and girly things to color, and I couldn’t use any of them!!!! I know, it’s a sad story …
I decided to double up and make two cards each of two different designs. (I had to clean the house, and help my husband with work, so that limited me to only one day to make all four cards. I had to be efficient!) One design is for an upcoming TGIF Challenge, so you can see that next week, but here’s the other one:
I struggle with designing masculine cards, so the Half Full stamp set is my saving grace. A lot of my friends and co-workers enjoy good wine, so this is a no brainer. This card is for my boss. He’s an old Italian guy, who LOVES his red wine. I know he’ll get a big kick out of this.
If you look carefully, I did sneak in one new Sale-A-Bration product, the gorgeous Springtime Foils Specialty Designer Series Paper. This paper is TO DIE FOR!!!! I predict it will sell out quick, so get yours while you can. You can earn it for FREE with a purchase of $50 during Sale-A-Bration. It is printed with gold, silver, and rose foil… Well, that’s funny. As I’m writing this up, I checked and realized it is indeed gold foil, not copper which is what I originally thought. I used copper elements on this whole card!!! But, that’s OK, because it looks like it matches in real life.
I stamped the wine glass and grapes (part of the tag stamp) with Versamark on Shimmery White paper and embossed them in copper. Then, I used an Aqua Painter to watercolor them with Crumb Cake, Cherry Cobbler, Eggplant Envy, and Always Artichoke ink.
Tip: When watercoloring, think about where the shadows would be and add color there to make it darker. For example, on the bottle, I added color to the sides and bottom first and then shaded towards the center to make the bottle look round. For the grapes, I started with Cherry Cobbler ink, then added Eggplant Envy to the bottom of the grapes to make them look round.
There’s no die cut for the bottle and grapes, so I had to cut those out by hand with good old scissors!
For the Happy Birthday, I cut the thinlit out of Shimmery White and Copper Foil paper. Prior to cutting, I attached Multipurpose Adhesive Sheets to the back of the cardstock. This makes adhering the die cuts super easy. Just peel off the backing and stick. Also, I find that for this die, using a Precision Base Plate really helps to get a nice, clean cut and eliminate those little bumps on top that often show with the Standard Plate. (I forgot and cut the copper layer without the Precision Base Plate. While I covered most of it up with the Shimmery White layer, you can still see some of the bumps.)
Before adhering the two dies together, I watercolored the Shimmery White with Crumb Cake ink to create an ombre effect.
The bottom layer of my card is a layer of Soft Suede cardstock embossed with the Simple Stripes Textured Impression Embossing Folder. That is another one of my new favorites!!! Super pretty!
Supplies used on my card:
