Masculine cards - Father's Day, Sympathy, and Birthday!!

Hello! It's Monday and I'm mourning the weekend already! How about you? We got away for a brief northern Michigan getaway to a friend's graduation open house. It was way too quick of a trip, but we enjoyed the sunshine and time together.

I have a lot of men in my life....Okay, so that didn't sound good! LOL! I have a wonderful husband, two boys, a wonderful father of my own, and so on. It's always a challenge to make a manly card. Last year for Father's Day, I created this one for my husband. The card was inspired by one I saw on line and I, unfortunately, didn't save the information to give proper credit. I more than likely found it on Scrapbooks, Etc. Hopefully I'm giving credit where credit is due. Here's the card.

 I had so much fun making this. I whip stitched all the way around the edge. The lined paper on the inside helped me to keep my writing straight and it seemed to add to the grungey look of the card.

The chipboard was from my stash, along with the buttons and the twine. I like the carefree feel of it. I remember it taking me awhile to make, but I do love the way it turned out.

It remains to be seen whether I'll get any Father's Day cards made this year. I have no scrap room during the summer when my son is home from college, so I haven't decided whether I can live with my creative mess in my dining room.

The next card is a birthday card for one of my nephews. I'm sure guys don't typically "cherish" or hang on to their birthday cards for very long, so I tried to make it a quickie and I've already forgiven him for probably tossing it after a week...LOL!  Hopefully the thought of me slaving over it is still appreciated. =)

I used Tim Holtz distress ink "antique paper" and a woodgrain background stamp. The vertical stripe is tape from a travel collection. The striped piece was from my stash. I stapled on a few pieces of twine and tied them in the center sith a smaller piece. Stamped a grungey sentiment and popped it up with foam adhesive. A pretty quick card!

Next is a sympathy card for a guy at work who recently lost his Dad.

I used black, red and kraft card stock. The clock and vertical sentiment are Tim Holtz, and the Praying for You sentiment is StampinUp. There are two layers of red. The bottom later was dry embossed using a checkerboard folder.  I layered it all up and inked all of the edges.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today! Have a great evening!

"Celebrate Easter" layout

Here is a layout of  Easter 2011! How's that for scrapping the current? The left side is inspired by a sketch from the Practical Scrappers site. I loved the inspiration for the long stemmed flowers. I actually stitched these stems by hand. I first pierced the cardstock with the Sew Easy tool (zig zag wheel). That was the easy part! LOL! Actually the sewing was easy, it just took awhile. I used my scallop circle punch and cut each punch in half to use as a vertical border along my pictures. I cut the title with my Cricut, using a phrase from one cart and the font from another for a unique look.

You may be wondering about these handmade flowers. I call them my Easter trash to treasure flowers! Here's the tutorial from a previous post here on my blog showing you how to make the flowers from Easter candy wrappers! The leaves in the bottom right corner were created the same way (cutting them freehand) and running them through a crimper.

 

Easter layouts are so fun because I can use bright fun colors, that I might not normally use on a layout. I hope this will inspire you to try making some handmade trash to treasure flowers, or at least experimentng with some bright fun colors!

Valentines Day tags

Valentine's Day!!! Yay! It's such a wonderful day to shower your family and friends with love!  I saw some great Valentines tags in Scrapbooks, Etc. magazine and I thought I'd try some. They took a little longer than I thought they would, but I LOVE the way they came out. 

The first tag is a little more girley.

This tag is the more grungey look and fitting for the guys in the family.

Supplies:

Medium manilla tags:  The Paper Company

Patterned Paper:  The Paper Studio, and Archivers

Stamps:  Bracketts - StampinUp!, Heart (guy card) -Close to My Heart, Journey - Tim Holtz, Flourishes - Scrappy Cat acrylics

Punches: Circle-Creative Memories, standard hole punch, Postage Stamp and Bracket border - Fiskars

Paint and Ink: Smooch Spray, and black pigment ink, and Martha Stewart (red)

Stickers: black letters - Creative Memories, red letters - Archivers

Miscellaneous: mini staples - Hobby Lobby, red and white Baker's twine - Michaels

Tools: Cuttlebug and embossing folders