Masculine Card - Any Occasion

I started making cards because I couldn't find satisfactory all purpose masculine cards.  It was easy to find flowery images or childish drawings but no real "hard" line masculine themes.  Masculine themed cards, like any others, have rules that need to be observed and followed.  The most obvious two are: color and texture.

Dark color schemes and rough finishes are usually associated with a more masculine look.  To me the perfect combination is "wood" and I use a lot of wood patterned papers for background of masculine cards.  The perfect example is the card below that uses not only K&Company wood patterned paper for the background but also for the highlights.  

I started by stamping some animal images (North Woods) on some very light wood patterned paper in sepia ink, leaving space between them and then colored the images with pencils.  I mounted the stamped images on a strip of dark brown paper; which I trimmed just slightly larger then the stamped strip.  Next I covered a size A2 tan colored cad with a wood patterned paper that I also edged with dark brown ink.  I continued the overlay process by adding the strip of stamped images to the card.  Next I create two "boards" by cutting two strips of a darker wood patterned paper, edged them in dark brown ink and added them to the card.  To take the card one step further into the masculine realm, I added faux nail heads, small black stickers from Stampendous. 

The "boards" ends were cut using a craft knife and have straight edges but these could have been cut with a deckle patterned scissor or die for a rougher look.  What ever the occasion is, the text can be put on the boards.

Making things fit!

As I stated I have over the years used  mostly size A2 cards ( 5 1/2" x 4 1/4") versus the larger more common size A7 card ( 7" x 5"). Often pre-made products are too large for size A2 cards. and my solution is to cut then apart or down and re-assemble them to the size I need. Case in point, this prairie style sticker frame.

I wanted to use the die of the forest for my background ... but it seemed too small and lost. Framing it was the way to go and I had the perfect sticker frame for it, problem it was way too big. So I cut the frame apart and then re-assembled it to fit centrally on the card. Then to bring more emphasis on the die cut I cut up a large pre-made flower die cut and laid it out to add just enough color and curves around the the smaller rectangular die cut. I adhered the "forest" die to a sky background patterned paper as well as added a bear sticker. Layer upon layer was added to literally force the bear to the fore front.