Masculine Birthday Card

Whoa, I didn't realize it's been nearly a month since I last posted- whoops!  Guess I have been busy!  I have not done a lot of crafting lately, so there hasn't been much to report.  I did a couple of birthday cards recently though, because we had two parties going on yesterday.  One was for my daughter's friend's birthday, and unfortunately, I did not get a picture of the card I made for her.  It was like this one though- just a different color scheme (I did purple, pink and green).  The other card was for my hubby's cousin Adam, who turned the big 4-0 on Friday.  There was a big luau party in his honor yesterday, and it was sooo much fun!  It was at my hubby's uncle Bob's house, where they have a large lot and a nice swimming pool.  They roasted a pig in the ground and had some amazing side dishes to go with it- lots of great food, great company, and great times!  My hubby went in with a friend to get Adam a nice camping chair, and as it happened, it had a camoflauge design on it.  So here is the card I made to give to Adam with the chair:

I never have an easy time with masculine cards, and lately it seems like I've had to make a lot of them!  I wish there were more masculine patterned paper choices out there- I have a very hard time finding papers that are appropriate for men.  Even if I find a paper in nice masculine colors, it tends to be in a floral or paisley or otherwise feminine pattern!  That's why I usually end up going with stripes, as that is all I can ever seem to find.  Camoflauge of course is the exception, though I hate to use that for everything since it can get a little cliched.  There was a guy who used to hang around the Etsy forums a couple of years ago who started a blog called "Metsy", and it focused on Etsy items for men.  He used to make fun of things that people would make for men in a camoflauge pattern, as if that would make an otherwise non-manly item masculine.  Wonder what happened to that guy?  He was pretty entertaining, even though he DID trash on my camoflauge bookmark!

Anyway, I digress.  Cliches aside, I feel the camo was appropriate in this case, as Adam does hunt and camp, and the pattern went with the chair too.  He seemed to like it- I just hope it wasn't the beer talking, lol!  I used a solid dark army green card base and then layered three offset layers of torn-edged paper.  It gives it a sort of rougher edge to the look of the card.  I used torn-edged paper on the inside as well.  Overall it's a pretty simple design, but kind of different.  I kind of like the offset look- I may have to try that on some other cards as well.

I also recently made a set of cards for my hubby's friend's mom- she is the one who has the beach house that we stayed at for our anniversary this year, and I made a Thank You card to send her.  She liked it so much that a few weeks later, she put in a huge order for some cards from my shop!  We are going to be staying at the house again for a week for our summer vacation next month, so as a thank you, I made a set of notecards for her in different washi paper patterns.  Here are those:

For a couple of these, I used paper that I bought from an Etsy seller that I found who brought a bunch of washi papers back from Japan.  She makes lovely boxes and other things that she covers with the paper, and sold some of the scraps as supplies.  I bought two batches from her awhile back, and had hoped to go back for more, but recently I checked her shop and it was almost all gone! :(  Well, hopefully she will restock!

Not much else on the agenda for the time being.  We're getting ready for vacation, and after that it will be time to get the kids ready to go back to school.  How time flies!  I have been mulling over the idea of making more occasion-specific cards for my shop...the blank cards don't seem to sell that well from what I've heard from other sellers.  So maybe I will try adding specific sentiments to some and see how that goes.