Although we tend to struggle with men's cards, the images below are just delightful. Whether your man is the golfer or the tool-man or backyard king, these images should fill the bill. These were samples sent from the company, but I really like their use of embossing folders and nice bold stripe paper. You'll want to keep these fun images in mind the next time you start your hunt for the perfect birthday/retirement card!

The stamp kits below are some more new releases from Art Impressions. With these trifold images, they will use a lot of watercolour techniques.

The link below will take you to their blog with some descriptions of the tryfold cards.

http://artimpressionsstamps.blogspot.ca/search?updated-max=2015-03-06T05:00:00-05:00&max-results=10

Elizabeth Dies have these neat 'stand-up helpers'. In the easel card below, you can see that the 'Best Wishes' becomes the stop for the front of the card when it is opened. In this card, Bev has cut the Best Wishes out of the original black card, and layered it with one cut out of the silver cardstock. She has framed both layers with the mirrored cardstock. The die-cut from Memory Box, Eva Stem, has been cut in the black layer with doubled sided tape underneath and foil leafing.

The butterfly sticker has been placed onto a piece of acetate and trimmed. This will allow the butterfly wings to stay lifted.

 

The Sue Wilson dies are absolutely lovely even though a bit large. We have used the Gemini Dies - Phoenix as a border edge in the card below. What you need to know about this die is that it is too wide for most of your pressure machines (Cuttlebug and BigShot). To compensate for this, Bev has cut the border by feeding it through the machine vertically, cutting the border piece to size and then layering the cut piece underneath the top of the card. The die shape is cut from Nellie's Straight Eastern Oval Set. I find this set of stacking dies a lovely unusual shape to play with. As you can see, the dies are very close in size so the framing is nice and tight.

 



Magenta has the best line of natural images. All of the branches, grasses and leaves provide lots of versatility. We have incorporated one of these images in the card above with a verse from Penny Black. When designing a general occasion card, you can always add your verse and/or sentiment at a later time.

Some customers have registered some concerns regarding the shade of the new Cracked Pistachio Distress Ink from Ranger. I would agree, at first look, that this green is rather minty and intense. What you need to know is that this shade creates a perfect blend with Pumice Stone and/or a number of the brown Distress Inks. The blending brings out a gorgeous 'patina' look. In the project below, we've used the Distress Stain to colour the seam binding, which then became our ribbon for the project. We used the Distress Marker on gloss cardstock to colour the children's images in one of Tim's 'found people' cards.

 





Although I have yet to finish this project, the present back page, shown below, is a good example of the blending that I'm talking about. The 'Typo' Stencil has been used on the tag with Texture Paste. The background was coloured with Cracked Pistachio and Pumice Stone and the alphabet has been highlighted with Vintage Photo. This is the look I love and you likely couldn't accomplish it without this particular shade of minty green. Another place I would use this colour is in my blue and green blends. It certainly is a colour that had been missing from his colour palette.

This is new die from Hot Off The Press. I like that the die fills an A2 card without having to add too many more details. It is lovely as a plain silhouette on top of a multimedia background. In the card below, we have cut the die from white cardstock and used Peeled Paint Distress Ink to colour the stems. The heads of the flowers were cut from white as well, and embossed with a tight image embossing folder. We then coloured the flowers with Distress Inks and Rangers Liquid Pearls mixed with water to add a shimmery finish. To attach the flower heads, we used a tiny bit of glue at the base of the flower, and a 1/8th inch foam adhesive square in the centre of the flower to create dimension. Don't miss the dragonfly checking out the flowers!

The mini print papers come in the four shades as seen above are from The Paper Cut. I love these soft pastel shades as a layer to add interest. These are an 80 lb. cardstock so they are a nice heavy weight to work with.

Acetate can add such an interesting element to your card making arsenal. The acetate pages below are layered onto coloured card so that you can see the patterns. The most versatile piece would be the sheet that is on a olive green background. If you notice this one has piano keys, damask, as well as a couple of lines of sheet music, and filmstrip. The piece on the top right corner is all cancelled post marks, and travel icons which would be great for Paris-themed or bon-voyage cards. There are two other sheets below with printed corners. All these sheets mentioned above are $1.95 each. The last sheet on the bottom right has a beautiful white glitter enamel in the shape of lilies. Because of the glitter, this sheet sells for $2.95.

 

 

In the card below, Bev has used alcohol inks on the back of the printed acetate to create some lovely blue-purple colour combinations. The die shown below is cut out of black gloss and tucked in the corner under the salutation. Keep in mind that with clear acetate you can colour on the back side with acrylic paints, any permanent inks, or some stencil pastes. 

 



Time to get out your lovely naturals from Magenta to create a simple coloured band. In the card below, we've used stencil tape (low-tack painters tape) to section off an area of the card. The tighter naturals have been stamped in 'Pine Needles' and the script has been stamped in 'Pumice Stone'. When we were happy that the design was tight enough, the last step is to distress with Pine needles. We went a little heavier with the 'Pine Needles' around the four edges and left more light space in the centre. At this point, we removed the painters tape and stamped the Magenta's berry stamp and verse as shown.

This is a nice quick way to use a combination of stamps and colours to make a series of notecards at one sitting. Give it a try, you'll be amazed how quickly these cards are finished! They don't require taping for layers or colouring or die-cutting, so they are a fast and easy go-to card.