Masculine Cards

Last week's Hero Arts challenge was to design a card with a masculine look. I am posting the two cards I designed. Both involved the use of cork and both required a trip to Home Depot for hardware. After all, I needed gold hardware and not silver hardware! Sigh...I am such a girl.

For the first card, I stamped a bunch of ferns onto cork using Colorbox Chalk Dark Brown ink. I find that pigment ink stamps better on cork than dye ink. I added a saying and then layered some gold washers and nuts to the bottom of the card. Diamond Glaze worked really well to hold the heavy metal accents to each other and to my card.

For the second hard, I wanted to have a "floral" card even though it was a card for a man. I stamped some abstract Hero Arts blotches onto cream paper using the same brown ink as before. I cut out the blotches and then added washers and nuts to the centers. There is a brown brad in each of the center holes, but they aren't holding the hardware to the card. Once again, Diamond Glaze came to the rescue! I stamped some stitches to the bottom cork piece and then added a saying to finish the card.

A couple of side notes about the cards. First, I think I used all discontinued stamps...sorry! Hero Arts tends to come up with new stuff all the time, but they also discontinue stamps quickly as well. It is hard to keep up with them! I did try to use some generic images. I am sure many of you have similar stamps already. Second, when working with cork, you need to be careful where you place it on your card. It is hard to pull the cork back up if you decide to move it to a different location. Once it is down, it is down.