Masculine cards

Do you find it difficult to make cards for men?  It's a challenge for me to find ideas that don't turn out looking either too childish or too feminine!  The images on this one are from the cartridge From My Kitchen.  If you haven't taken a look at that one, it's worth checking out.  There are a lot of things on there that you can use for something other than recipe cards or recipe layouts.  The background paper on the lower half has little barbeque grills on it.  I added some orange Stickles in the grill to make it look like coals and did some squiggles to resemble smoke.  And, of course, I did MORE doodledots----there's that word again!  The words were just printed on my PC. 

I do a lot of inking on the edges of my cards.  The inking softens the edges and does make the card look more finished.

I'm not sure where I first saw this saying, but I thought it was so funny and appropriate for a guy card.  Yes, that's real duct tape over the edges of the saying. 

The images on the inside were some I found online and printed using my Hallmark Card Maker software.  The gears and wrench are from Indie Art.  They're cut from metallic paper to look more like real tools.  The background paper is from a stack that was purchased over 2 years ago.

Cursive 101 was used for the wording.  The pop cans are online images that I just resized, printed and cut out.  They're pop dotted for dimension.   I just used two sizes of circle punches for the black dots beside the cans.

The card images are SU stamps.  I used Color Box chalk inks and then just cut them out by hand and layed them out to look like a hand of cards.  The heart, club, etc. are from Indie Art.

This one was done for Father's Day.

My next post is going to be some of the very first cards I ever did.  I often think that my cards aren't very good but I suppose that we're all our own worst critic.  When I look back at the photos I saved of those cards I'm very pleased to see that my cardmaking skills have greatly improved.  You'll understand when you see the photos!  LOL!