Industrial Birthday Card

When I inherited a large craft stash a couple of years ago, included were a wonderful collection of industrial themed papers and toppers - great for masculine cards! I particularly love this wood texture - it would actually look great on my doll's house renovation... Paired with the metallic/chalkboard style topper it made for a quick but awesome Birthday card, and I added some metallic silver pen to the bolts for a bit of sparkle - I just couldn't resist!

Neutral Tones Birthday Card

An acquaintance of mine recently sold off a large amount of her craft supplies. Of course, I did what any artist would do and bought way too much stuff whilst it was available at great discounts! Included in everything I bought was a range of "masculine" card toppers and papers - think wood grain, brick work, metal sheets etc. It's all really quite lovely! And they are great for more masculine cards, when flowers don't quite cut it! For this card I paired them with some beautiful shimmery dark grey corrugated card I have in my stash, and kept with pure white to accentuate the "chalk board" lettering.

Plane Card

Have you ever heard of Wallies? I first found Wallies about 15-16 years ago, when I used their products (specifically their funky flower stickers) to decorate my bedroom walls. Wallies are a brand of sticker designed for wall decoration. They're really great, however I have found they are very difficult to locate in the UK - typical! As part of the stash I inherited last year I received a set of "transport" Wallies, including fire engines, cement mixers, trains, tractors and planes. They are great brightly coloured images which are quite useful for card decoration!

This card features a plane Wallies sticker mounted on some beautiful cloud paper from an old issue of Craftseller magazine, and some blue paper from my stash. The Wallies are designed with an adhesive back which is activated by a damp sponge, but since I was making a card I simply used Pritt Stick. I wanted the card to have a 3D element, so I cut out an extra propeller from matching orange paper and attached it with a hinge. It can fold flat for an envelope but open out for display!

Such an easy way to create a really graphically stunning card :)

Birthday Blues Card

The men in my family rarely fit a classic "masculine card theme". I like to try and go more abstract, looking at colours and textures. The "Happy Birthday" panel is a piece from an old Craftseller magazine, which you are probably pretty used to by now! [The free pages in those magazines have offered me a new world of colours and patterns, which I am hoping to explore further...] I carefully cut around the plaque, before mounting it on hammered ivory paper, and a beautiful, slightly sparkly, finely corrugated, slate grey card. The background panel is a cut-off from a larger piece of abstract watercolour art I did a few years ago. I always try and keep offcuts, as you never know when they'll be useful!

Masculine Birthday Card

Another card inspired from one of Craftseller's paper collections! The "flag-shaped" Happy Birthday originally featured an extra edge on two sides, to look like a shadow, but I can't say that I liked it, so it was removed! I mounted the "flag" using 3D dots, and cut a piece of matching paper to extend the length of the card. I really like the geometry of the arrow shapes, especially with the compass design. I mounted this on some cream card and a beautiful sparkly dark grey corrugated card.

Remember: just because something is designed to look a certain way, doesn't mean you have to use it like that :)