One for the Men

22 December 2011

All the cardmakers I know have one little difficulty (generally speaking) and that is coming up with cards for the males in our lives.
I was recently asked to make a card for a customer,  I always ask about interests, career, and try to get a feel about how I can personalise a card for someone I have never met.
In this instance I was told that the person was a tradesperson who worked with tools.

This is the card I made. My customer was very happy with the finished card, and hopefully her son will be as well.

Stampin Up have two beautiful stamps which I used for this card, One is a background stamp called Tool Shed, and the other is called Totally Tools.

I used Stampin Up Pacific Point A4 Card folded in half for my base card. then created 3 panels. I used Stampin Up Kraft card for the base of two of the panels, and Early Espresso for the third.
The diagonal pattern paper and the spotted paper comes from an 8" x 8" paper pad called the paper stack by DCWV (die cuts with a view)
The third panel started off as Whisper White cardstock, which I then inked with Distress Inks, I used Faded Jeans, Festive Berries, Chipped Sapphire, Aged Mahogany, Forest Moss, and then to tone down the blended colours I used Vintage Photo, and Pumice Stone Onto this I stamped Tool shed in Vintage Photo. then trimmed to the size I wanted.
From Totally Tools, I stamped onto Whisper White using Memento  Tuxedo Black  the Totally tools set, but I stamped two copies of the hammer.
I coloured in the tools using Copic Ciao markers, I'll list the numbers and colours at the end. I finished by going over the metal parts of the tools with  Spica  twinkling like stars 00 clear. (even the males don't mind a little bling on a card)
After fussy cutting out the saw, spanner, hammer and screw driver  I mounted them with foam mounts onto the Tool Shed stamped panel. The tape measure, I cut out using a Spellbinder rectangle and a scalloped rectangle in Pacific Point slightly larger I then stamped the tiny word 'son' along the measure, (the word comes from a set I bought from a $2 cheap shop years ago and I have no idea who produced it) and mounted the tape measure onto the blue with Stampin Up dimensionals.
The diagonally striped paper matched my inked stamped image perfectly, and that was pure fluke, because I inked the card and stamped the image before I even started looking for other papers. I was delighted to find such a good match in my stash. (wish I could say I planned it that way) the spotty paper has the same colour dots as are in the striped paper.
The inked panel and the pattern papers are all mounted using double sided adhesive tape, (my preference is for Score Tape)  the hammer is flat mounted using dots of craft adhesive onto the spotty panel, then the measure panel is mounted over it with Stampin Up Dimensionals.

Copics used were: C2, C3, C5 Cool grey No's 2,3 & 5; Y17 Golden Yellow' YR07 Cadmium Orange; E11 Barley Beige; YR16 Apricot; E25 Caribee Cocoa.

I hope this card helps give you some inspiration for those difficult to come up with male cards.

Happy Crafting,

Beth :-)