Masculine Birthday Cards

This  series of posts features cards I've made for a specific stationery order. My customer requested 25 greeting cards for a variety of occasions. And that's all the direction I got! Knowing her previous purchases from me, she likes simple things and lives on a farm, so I kept that in mind when I was making these cards. She's seen most of the designs I keep on hand for craft shows, so I wanted to create totally new cards for her.

I've tried to divide the cards out into small bunches (rather than overwhelm you with 25 cards and deets in one post) by the occasions they were designed for. Also, I'm a terrible photographer when it comes to cards. This has been confirmed.

Enjoy!

First up, masculine birthday cards. These are always the hardest cards for me to come up with when I'm making batches of cards. First, I like frills and glitter and all things girly. Most guys don't appreciate these things. Second, I rarely (if ever) make cards for the guys in my life...I know they appreciate a good joke rather than a well-made card, so I normally will buy them cards. Yeah, I know, I suck creatively. I've accepted that :)

So, I thought these 4 cards would be the ones I left til last. But, for some reason, when I set my mind to it, these came to me pretty quickly. And I actually like most of them. So, into my design bunch they'll go, and I may actually make cards for some of my guys this year!

The first card is definitely my favorite. I don't pull out my markers and color very often, but this image always makes me want to do that. Now that I look at it though, I think it could really be striking on a kraft background in black or brown ink. Hmm. Regardless, I went for a really weathered, rugged look on this card, and I think I got the message across. I can see this card for someone like my grandpa, who has always worked with his hands and seems to always be working on a project for someone :)

This second card is more of a traditional masculine scheme. There are some guys who you just think of as "classic." This card would be perfect for those types of guys. (I had one of our residents at work in mind when I created this card...it reminds me so much of him.)

A couple of fun things about this card - if you look closely (or enlarge) at the top of the card, you'll see 3 score lines. There's also an oval frame impression around the happy birthday sentiment. I did the score lines with my MS scoring tool...super easy and adds some extra details. The frame I did with a Nestabilities oval, and just placed it under my sentiment and gently ran a brayer over it. Be careful that the paper doesn't tear when you're doing that though. The other fun thing is the ribbon. I didn't have any navy and white ribbon, so I took a piece of SU! white taffeta, a navy marker and a ruler, and made my own. I love the SU! taffeta for coloring on and making custom ribbon.

The third card is definitely the most simple of them all, but I do think this card would work for the majority of guys I know (changing the colors for some). I didn't have paper in the colors I wanted, so I just made some stripey paper using a lined background stamp. I purposely used distress ink so the lines wouldn't be crisp and perfect...I like that they're a little weathered.

Finally, the fourth card is definitely the most fun. I think this would be perfect for a teenage boy, or even someone older or younger. I don't know if you can see in the picture, but the large orange star at the bottom has been stamped with a "rock star" image, and I made sure to distress as many surfaces as I could to give the card a tattered look.

I didn't have a background stamp that I really liked, so I took a circle frame image from a PTI set (Take Note, I think), and stamped the circles on the front of my card. I used an image from Background Basics: Retro to make the smaller circles that are in the spaces of the big circle. It didn't turn out half bad and I'll probably use that design again. I'm finding more and more that I'm making my own background papers rather than looking to purchase just the right one.

You'll also notice that I used ribbon on 3 of the 4 cards. I'm not normally a fan of embellishments on masculine cards, but I think the way I did it here works (they're masculine prints, frayed or a little imperfect, and there isn't a bow in sight.)

Check back over the next few days for other occasions, including feminine birthday cards, special occasions (weddings, babies, etc.), thank yous, thinking over you/sympathy, and general greetings. Not necessarily in that order.