A birthday card for a man using a combination of blues and browns

Male birthday cards are often the most difficult for cardmakers to design. I usually start with an appropriate colour combination (often blues and greens, steering away from pinks and peaches), add one of the more masculine stamps and look for hard edged designs for background papers rather than swirls and curves.

This one is for my friend Paul, whose birthday is tomorrow (I'm taking a bit of a risk blogging this one before the day but I somehow doubt that he'll spot it *giggles*). Here I've started with a card blank of Chocolate Chip.  The embossed panels on the background are made from Bashful Blue and Creamy Caramel card put through the Argyle Cuttlebug folder. I stamped the Loads of Love truck onto Whisper White, Night of Navy and Basic Grey card with Basic Grey ink. The presents and the lady driver (from the Loads of Love Accessories set) were positioned with the Stamp-a-ma-jig and coloured with markers. I also used markers to colour the tyres. The truck was cut from the stamped image in Night of Navy and the tyre hubs were cut from the image done on Basic Gray. 

These were then paper pieced onto the image (I always used to call it decoupage even though it was only one layer but I've noticed that most crafters call it paper piecing, so who am I to buck the trend). A white Signo gel pen was used to give a bit of highlighting to the truck. The whole was then matted onto more Night of Navy card. Bashful Blue taffeta ribbon was attached to the inside edge of the card and another tiny piece of the same ribbon knotted over it (I almost always use knots rather than bows if I use ribbon on a man's card).

I'd love to know what you think. Do you find it difficult to make cards for men? Let me know.

Sara xx