A manly week

This week on the Hero Arts blog it was man week! They had an awesome blog with many different cards that men who work at Hero did and family and friends did! It was cool to see what the guys came up with! The challenge this week was to make a manly card. And to try to get the men in our lives to stamp with us! Sadly I wasn't able to get my darling hubby to participate as I worked 5 shifts this week and with this long weekend! I have a small part time job that I have to work 3 hours every 3 months to keep my job, and that's what I typically do (plus I am just coming back from a year off with mat leave) With back to school and my upcoming trip to Scrapfest09 I told them that if they could I would love a few shifts, and in the past 2 1/2 weeks I have worked 10! Oh well I am not complaining as it's great to be making my own money to bring on my trip! And I work in the evenings and weekends when hubby can be home with the kids. And well hubby may not have made a card but yesterday when I got home there were oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that he made and a cleanish house!

I was excited about this challenge because lately I have enjoyed making manly cards! Now that I have a lot more stamps and such that work for guys! I find that personally I give a lot of guy cards out for birthdays so I could always add to the stash. I made sort of like a collection using the Three Designer Leaves stamp set and some PP by Kauser focusing on using Kraft, Green and Brown. I also thought it would work to use a page out of a book for a manly card. I love using book pages in cards as it's so totally me as I just LOVE TO READ! Finding a book of my many to tear up is hard! It has to be a book of mostly text, not too many headers or paragraphs, it has to have close script and you have to watch what kinds of words are in the books! Everytime I picked up one of my chick lit to look through to see if it would work I realized hey I don't remember this book I can't tear it up! I think almost half the time I put into these cards was looking for a book. I had to find a wider one for the horizontal cards, I finally just used some textbook from my 1960's history class! Here are all four cards:



I started with just one card and than kept having more ideas off that one! I was inspired by others online who use thread in there cards and went for it with the brown! It was fun!

This was the first one I made and maybe my favorite. I love it! I stamped the trees in green and brown pigment ink and than clear embossed it on top! It took a few tries as if you heat it too much the ink would run! I think the book page works so great!

Than I had the idea to crumple the page and distress it and ink up the edges with the brown ink. I love how it looks!

This was the first one that I tried the crumple with I just crumpled it into a ball! I put the book paper on the brown with popups so it kept the crumple look! I also distrssed the edges of the brown and the pp!

I stamped the trees in the ink also but left no sentiment so I could use it for whatever I will need! I used a nestie in this one but not the whole nestie just parts! I like it! I also tied a clear button on the thread! I cut it out of the inside of my daughters adjustable pants that she outgrew! :>

And I made this card early in the week. I drew stitches all along with white gel pen and cut the stars out with different pp's in my big shot. I used the ALL STAR sentiment from the Graduation HA set. I love the play on the words All star!

I hope you enjoyed my manly cards!

Material used: Three Designer Leaves, Happy Birthday from Cupcakes set, All Star from Graduation set all HA. Birthday Wishes SU. Random buttons Moss Green, Chestnut ink by Colorbox, Bazzill cardstock, Nestabilities Labels 1, Random book, Kauser PP, American Crafts PP, White Gel pen!