A Nod to Nudie - Boys will be Boys at UnstampaBelles

 The UnstampaBelles September challenge is Boys will be Boys, with the twist of sharing your opinion on what makes a good male card/gift. Remember: no stamps!

I've been asked many times for my thoughts on making cards for men, and my first answer is always: Depends on the man. But my main suggestions are: Texture, Interactivity, and Humor. You can never go wrong with a CAS card with a pop-up inside. Those pointers aside, I was inspired by some very manly music & the costumes that go along with it. I also broke two rules a good friend has for male cards: No glitter or roses!

The other evening my husband & I had fun listening to some ol' Country music (mostly Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris) and ended up marveling at the suit/costume designs by Nudie & Bobbie Cohen of Nudie's Rodeo Tailor (Be sure to check out Nudie's Official Facebook page). My husband challenged me to make a card inspired by these incredible costumes. I had fun with it!

The card design is based on Mel Stampz's Jacket Card. I used two store-brought handmade papers: a beautiful embossed white paper for the shirt, and a black paper with a silver rose design. I embossed the lapels with black powder, and added the red details with red glitter glue. I altered an embroidered rose to make a twig-n-berries design for the lapel, as a pun on Nudie's classic design.

The charm is from Korthobby, a fabulous shop based in Norway that sponsors the Sketchy Colors challenge blog. Recently I won a beautiful bag of metal charms from them, which included this one, which apparently translates in English to "real men" from the Norwegian Ekte mannfolk (I checked this with a friend living in Norway, but if you have a different translation please leave a comment). Can't you imagine this charm being worn by a 1970s s[w]inger!

Here's a song & some suits that inspired this card:




Inspiration/Challenges:
Art Impressions Stamps Challenge #167: Southern Style
Natalie and Amy's Challenge #36: Use a Charm
Ruby's Rainbow #11: It's A Man's World

Be sure to check out the fabulous projects by my teamies and hope you'll join us this month at UnstampaBelles!


Thank you for visiting,

Simply Wonder Woman

I was the very lucky winner of Sketchy Colors' Sketch Challenge and received an awesome prize from Korthobby: a large bag of metal embellishments & charms all the way from Norway! I decided to make a Wonder Woman-themed card using one of my new metal embellishments & the 200th anniversary sketch at Freshly Made Sketches.

For the belt buckle, I heat-embossed the back of a metal embellishment from Korthobby with an antique-gold powder and carefully placed gemstones in some of the indented portions. Both the gemstones & the final metal piece were adhered with Glossy Accents. The friend I made this for loves pink, so I used pink gemstones.

I created the sentiment in SCAL and cut it from adhesive silver vinyl with my Silhouette Cameo. The red & blue portions are white cardstock inked with chalk inks. The belt is a scrap of gold paper. The little stars were also cut on my Silhouette, and were leftover from another project.

I'm pleased with how this came out ... almost like how it looked in my head!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Freshly Made Sketches: Sketch #200 + Clean Lines
The Paper Girls: Super Heroes
Sparkle N Sprinkle: AG with Embossing Powder etc.


Thank you for visiting & for inspiring my crafting,