The Big Man at Cardz 4 Guyz

This week at Cardz 4 Guys the theme is "The Big Man" - Father Christmas (or Santa Claus, if you prefer to call him that, he's very obliging about answering to both names) and of course we want to see cards suitable for a man or boy.

This snowboarding Santa image from the CD "The Best of La Pashe 2014" would be great for a teenage boy, although I've given it a rather more "grown up" feel by reflecting the pine trees in the background of the image with a plethora of die cut pine boughs and cones cut and embossed with Spellbinders dies on my Grand Calibur.

Does it appeal to a man? Well my husband grabbed it to send to one of his friends almost before the glue was dry!

I'm joining in with
Crafty Creations Challenges - Something to Die For
The Male Room - Christmas
Cuttlebug Mania - Anything Christmas

Your Favourite Christmas Colour Combo at Cardz 4 Guyz

We're into December now and as far as Christmas card making goes, on the home straight. Have you made all yours yet? Well here's an incentive to make one more - this week's Cardz 4 Guyz challenge is Your Favourite Christmas Colour Combo. We'd love to see your cards - as long as they are suitable for a male, of course. Why not pop over to Cardz 4 Guyz and see what the other DT members have come up with?

I had to think long and hard - I love so many colour combinations that I don't really have a favourite. But red and white is a classic at Christmas (although I believe we have the Coca Cola company to thank for the colours of Santa's outfit!) and I thought keeping to just those colours would help to give the card a masculine feel. Plus a lot of the top football clubs play in red and white, so it's a colour combo a lot of men are very happy with!

I had some red and white ribbon that went perfectly with my deep red card. Oddly enough on the photo, it appears to be a lot darker than the card. You can see the true colour of the ribbon on the knot just below the greeting.

When using ribbon on a card for men, here are some suggestions to help prevent it looking too feminine:

• Obviously, choose "manly" colours and styles - nothing printed with pink butterflies, for example!
• Choose matte rather than shiny, and chunky rather than delicate. Grosgrain works beautifully - organza is very hard to give a masculine appearance to!
• Knots look less feminine than bows.
• Keep it simple - straight lines and flat finishes, not frills, pleats and rosettes.

The snowflakes were cut with a Spellbinders set plus a Die-sire die that came free with a magazine. The medium sized one from the Spellbinders set is a real PIG to get out of the die! Even with waxed paper, or wiping the die with an anti static cloth (ie a tumble drier softener sheet) I usually have to have three or four attempts before I manage to get one out intact. The stamp is also a magazine freebie. I decided to finish the snowflakes off with pearls - not a very masculine touch but I thought it made an interesting change from Candi. And anyway, if a man can't get in touch with his feminine side at Christmas, when can he?

 

I'm sharing this with the following challenges:

 

The Male Room - Masculine Ribbon 

Suzy Bee's Bloomin' Challenge - ATG with a twist - Keep It Simple  

Completely Christmas - ATG with a Twist - Something beginning with S (Snowflakes) 

Just Us Girls - Anything Goes  

Winter Wonderland - Dies and Punches

Exciting news - and a tutorial

I'm delighted to be able to announce today that I have joined the Design Team of the Cards4Guyz challenge blog and this is my first DT post.

If you're not familiar with Cards4Guyz, it is a weekly blog challenge for male themed projects only. I think we're all agreed that making cards for men is much harder than for women, and I've learned  a huge amount about making cards for men in the few months that I've been joining in the challenges so I was delighted when Caz accepted me on to her team.

Here is my first DT card, made for this week's challenge which is No Balls Allowed (Sport). As a fan of motor racing, I immediately thought of Motor Sport and found a great image and backing papers on the La Pashe CD "Something for Everyone". The image, but not the papers, is also available as a decoupage sheet download.

A few days ago I spotted a great tutorial for making a Twisted Card on the Whiff of Joy blog. I immediately thought how useful it would be for man-cards, as I've often found that cards with a bit of engineering in them appeal to men. They spend ages folding and unfolding them to see how they work! So to make this card I followed the detailed instructions which you will find on the link above, but adapted it to a sheet of A4 to give a bigger card. The only drawback with the bigger card was it was difficult to score as it was longer than my ruler or scoring board - but I dug out my old yardstick and used that to score the long diagonal line.

Here is a series of step-by step pictures taken as I went along. A few of tips for you - when you've completed the basic card, make a pencil note on the surfaces you want to cover with paper before unfolding it to do the covering. Draw around the panels onto your background paper, making sure you have arranged it so that the right side of the paper faces the right direction (I got this bit wrong the first time and wasted a sheet of paper because the flags were pointing downwards!). If you are planning on making several cards of this type, you could make a blank card from that old piece of fluorescent pink card in the bottom of your stash pile (I know you have one, we all do) and cut it into separate panels, trimming it down to the size you want to cut your papers to, depending on how much layering you like to do.

 

 

 

 

The topper and greetings need to be added after re-folding the card to get the positioning right. The finished card:

and inside:

 

I added Glossy Accents to the car to make it shiny - that seems to be my new favourite trick!

 

 

 

I think this style of card would be great as a gift card holder, as you could tuck the gift card between the two layers on the inside

 

 

Well, after all that, I had all the decoupage from the image sheet left, as well as some of the backing papers. So what was there to do but make another card?

I'm joining in with

CD Sunday Challenge - Birthday card for a male (with the second card in this post)
Crafting at the Weekend - Anything Goes
Tok Bobok - Masculine
 Crafty Hazelnut's Patterned Paper Challenge - September