Simnple birthday card

Sometimes less is more - particularly for cards for men.

I got the inspiration for this card from another I saw on Pinterest. I used a 300gsm white card as a base, then layered on some hand made paper at the bottom and a piece of patterned paper for the top and tied the ribbon around. A fragment of the same ribbon was folded in half and glued just under the top layer. The card was finished off with black acrylic jewels. I rounded the corners on the bottom using the corner rounder  on my envelope board (another great bit of equipment!).

Father's Day Card 2

 

A simple card for Father's Day, using layering and a large sentiment. I hand cut the layered paper banner ends. The card is finished with black acrylic jewels.

Father's day card

What to make for a man?

I found the image I used for this card on  TuckDB Ephemera. The images on the TuckDB site are postcards that are over 100 years old and are public domain. I generally download the big image so that I can make a 300dpi quality image for printing and then use Photoshop to modify it, clean and extend the background for use with paper dies. The images that I have "cleaned", I am making available for download. You can download the image I "cleaned" for this card here. The right hand edge is not great, but gives enough room to crop and looks fine cropped. I've also added a sentiment to the image.

You can resize the image using Phoxo software (see my tutorial on using digital stamps). Once cleaned, I printed the image on a bubble jet printer, cut the image and sponged the edges using black ink. I used two sizes of label dies from Spellbinders for the image and it's dark green background, then layered these on another cut out using a Spellbinders die. I then cut the remaining background layers using a Cutterpillar Pro. This bit of equipment is possibly the best investment in card making equipment I've ever made! It cuts like a dream.

My one gripe about spellbinders labels is that even though I used consecutive dies, the difference in sizes is too great, leaving a border which I think is too thick.To get a thinner border you have to buy an additional set  and they are not cheap! I'm thinking I might trace around one of the dies in gold pen to add a boarder to break up the thickness but I don't want to risk ruining the card either....so maybe I should leave well enough alone?

Angela