Masculine Style Birthday Cards

This week over at Always Playing With Paper Challenge #66 we have this Nautical Style Masculine inspiration image.  I confess, I struggle with masculine cards but one of the things I've decided for myself is that bold & graphic is better when it comes to men.  I really love stripes for masculine cards and I have this great paper that has foiled stripes on it. When I saw the inspiration image I knew I wanted to pair that up in some way for today's card.

I started with a 5.5 x 4.25 inch top folding notecard made from the Navy & Gold Striped paper.  I mounted that to another fairly thin white notecard as neither was thick enough on their own to make a very good card.  Using a Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Die, I cut a smaller panel from the Gold & White stripe paper.  To give a fun feel without going to extremes I adhered this panel skewed to the right but lined up somewhat with the gold stripes on the background paper.  I cut a Papertrey Ink Text Block - Horizontal Birthday die cut from Gold Foil Cardstock with a piece of SU! Night of Navy cardstock behind it and then adhered that skewed in the other direction. I also cut 2 candles from a QK Revolution Die.  I put a solid gold candle behind the star cut out candle and covered the navy card stock with Wink of Stella Clear Shimmer.  My photo doesn't really show this very well, but I promise - it's there.

This turned out to be a bold graphic image that is perfect for a masculine card.  I used a scrap of glitter card stock for the center of the candle which is about as much glitter as I dare to put on a masculine card.

This was a super fast and easy card to make and there was no stamping at all. A couple of die cuts made for quick work.  Thanks so much for stopping by today and be sure to check out the other great cards inspired by this image over at The Challenge.  There are some great ones there already!