A Masculine Birthday Card

Masculine cards always used to be a bit of a challenge for me until Stampin’ Up! came out with their Totally Tools stamp in the Spring-Summer 2009 catalogue. It was my Father-in-law’s birthday on the 17th, but we went over to my in-laws for dinner on Monday as it was a holiday (Family Day here in Canada). Because I had been so busy leading up that day I hadn’t had any time to make a card.  So Monday, about an hour before we were due to leave I sat down and pulled out Totally Tools and the new To The Nines Specialty DP and set to work.

As you can see from the picture of the Totally Tools stamp set at the bottom of this post, it is actually a set of 5 stamps – each tool is paired with it’s own greeting.  Because I didn’t want the associated greetings, I only inked up the tools in Basic Brown ink and stamped them onto scraps of white CS.  Stampin’ Up! did a really nice job in the way they laid out the image and greeting on the rubber – they left enough space that you can easily ink up either the image or the greeting with one of our full-sized ink pads. Once I had stamped my images onto the white, I colored in the metal parts of the tools with Going Gray ink, the wooden handles with Basic Brown and the handle of the screwdriver with Sage Shadow. I used a blender pen for all my coloring. Once I was finished coloring in all the tools I carefully cut them out and layered the two bottom tools (the screwdriver and the hammer) onto the bottom of a piece of Whisper White.   Once those tools were attached I stamped the Celebrate greeting in Chocolate Chip, and just a portion of the “It’s your day….enjoy” in Sage Shadow.  Once that was done, I layered on the top two tools using Stampin’ Dimensionals.

To assemble my card I layered a piece of the To The Nines Specialty DP onto a piece of Chocolate Chip CS. I then took a piece of wide grosgrain Chocolate Chip Ribbon, placed it across the matted DP, brought the ends of the ribbon around back and stuck them down to the back of the Chocolate Chip CS.  I then centered and mounted this piece to the Sahara Sand card front.  Lastly, I centered and mounted the greeing & image to the matted DP.

All supplies are Stampin’ Up! and you can see a full listing of the supplies used at the end of this post.

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Stamps:  Totally Tool (113256), Celebrate Everything (114942), On Your Birthday (111664)
Ink: Basic Brown Classic (104315), Going Gray Classic (103274), Sage Shadow Classic (102532)
Paper: Sahara Sand CS (105328), Chocolate Chip CS (102128), Whisper White CS (100730), To The Nines Specialty DP (114038)
Accessories:  1/16″ circle punch (101227), stamp-a-ma-jig (101049), 5/8″ Chocolate Chip Grosgrain ribbon (109051), Stampin’ Dimensionals (104430), 5/16″ Jumbo Brads – Chocolate Chip (112534)