Masculine nature-inspired cards

When I need to make masculine cards, I often turn to my nature-themed stamps. I know not all guys are interested in nature and animals -- and plenty of women are -- but the images and colors often seem to lend themselves to masculine cards. So here are four nature-inspired cards made with two Stampin' Up! sets: Rooted in Nature and Nature's Beauty.

I had a fun surprise when I sat down to make these cards: I opened up the stamp case and found almost all of these pieces already stamped and die cut, ready to go! (Even the Crumb Cake card base on the left was already stamped.) I just added the birthday banner on the left-hand card and the card base, frame, and brown background for the right-hand card.

I love all the different tree elements in this stamp set, but I'll admit that I have a hard time combining them in a way I like. (That probably explains why all the pieces were in the stamp case -- I got frustrated and put everything away.) For these cards I just played around and layered pieces, trying to keep everything balanced. And all-in-all I think they turned out pretty well.

When I used the Nature's Beauty stamp set, I wanted to combine the images with a birch tree embossing folder. For the fox card, I embossed a piece of blue card stock and then lightly rubbed my Soft Suede ink pad over the card stock so the raised trees caught the ink. I stamped the fox using Soft Suede ink and I wanted to add some color without actually coloring. So I used copper metallic watercolor and quickly painted it over the fox. (I wasn't particularly careful, but I did try to limit the water I used so it didn't cause the Soft Suede ink to bleed.) Then I used the paint brush to splatter some copper ink on the embossed background piece.

When the paint was dry, I adhered the background to a Soft Suede card base. I die cut the fox with a stitched circle die and lightly sponged Soft Suede ink around the edges of the circle and the edges of a birthday sentiment strip. I adhered those two pieces to the card with foam tape and finished the card with a few metallic dots.

For the deer card, I wanted the trees to be white, so I applied white ink directly to the side of the embossing folder with the tress raised up. Then I placed a piece of Soft Suede card stock inside the embossing folder and ran it through my Big Shot. Because I applied the ink to the raised part of the folder, that meant the trees were pressed into the piece of card stock.

For the focal image on this card, I stamped the deer and a few of the grass images on a piece of white card stock. I stamped a birthday sentiment on a strip of white card stock and sponged ink around the edges of both pieces. To add a little more texture, I stapled a small piece of burlap trim to the upper left corner of the focal layer. I added both pieces to the card base using foam tape.

I made most of these cards into birthday cards, but they would be good for many different occasions -- just change or omit the sentiment.

Thanks for stopping by!