Category Archives: For guys

Man About Town – a New ‘Sturdio’ Album

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A short while ago I designed a new kind of folio album, with accordion style page sets and very sturdy cover parts – hence the new name I coined: a sturdio album 🙂

At the time I was in the Zone designing & creating, so I wasn’t able to write a tutorial. But I promised you I would, and now I have! So here is the second iteration of my sturdio album design, created with Graphic 45’s A Proper Gentleman collection. It’s a little bit larger, but it has the same page design as the original. You can find the tutorial in my Etsy shop.

This one was especially created for my dearest friend Christa, who wanted to have a very special album to keep her favorite pictures of her beloved husband.

So, without further ado, here’s Man About Town, a sturdio album.

 

 

September Serenity: Three Outdoors Cards (with nature sounds only)

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The three cards I’m sharing with you today were made with Bo Bunny‘s Trail Mix collection, filmed in the serenity of my mother’s garden on a sweet Summer’s day 🙂
And those are the actual birds in her garden you’re hearing, even some baby birds crying for their mom and dad to hurry up already bring them something to eat! 🙂

All three cards have their own unique design, so enjoy a moment of pieceful quiet – and while you’re at it, have a nice cup of tea!

While you’re here – please like & subscribe, and/or leave a comment and let me know what you think!

 

 

 

 

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30th Wedding Anniversary Explosion Box

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A short while ago a lady asked me to create an explosion box to suprise her husband for their 30th wedding anniversary. She had seen my Still in Love explosion box, and hoped I could create a similar one, but of course customized to her specific likes and wishes.

Since I still had enough of DCWV’s Natural stack, I set out to create another one of my explosion boxes. It has two layers with an altered miniature treasure chest hidden inside. The lady sent me some thoughts and feelings about her beloved husband, and some pictures of her family and their dog, all of which I incorporated as creatively as I could.

I was very happy to hear that the lady and her beloved loved it and are continually adding little personal memorabilia to it!

Like to create an explosion box yourself? Check out my tutorial, explaining the process of creating a three-layer explosion box in 80 pages and 190 pictures!

So, here’s the end result, enjoy!

 

The first two tags of these three were made with some tag die sets by Crealies:

 

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Free Tutorial: Vellum Card in Black & White

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Today I’m happy to share a tutorial with you all, of a sophisticated birthday card designed for a man. It’ll be great fun to make for all of you who, like me, don’t like to use any fluff when creating something for a guy. I always like to keep it clean and stylishly simple, and this time I’ve created the cleanest and simplest one yet of all of my projects for guys. 🙂

You can watch the show & tell video to see every detail of the card, so enjoy and have fun creating!

Tutorial

Let me know if you’d like me to do a (free) tutorial for this elegant card! (even years after this post is fine with me, just drop me line or leave a comment – I’m always in for new blog and/or video ideas 🙂 )

More detailed tutorials on a growing number of projects are available in my Etsy shop.

If you have any questions, just let me know!

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Tri-shutter Birthday Card for a Golf Player

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A so-called tri-shutter card is easy to make and almost always generates amazed and admiring responses. You can create them at different sizes and shapes (i.e. rectangular or square), simply by playing around with both the horizontal and vertical measurements of your cardstock.

I created different Christmas versions in the past, with the square (when folded closed) Holly Jolly cards and the smaller, rectangular Caramel Christmas versions.

Today I’m sharing a third variation: a birthday card for a golf player, using a Proper Gentleman paper by Graphic 45.

I fussy-cut an actual golf player from the paper and glued it to the left front panel, making sure the glof club was sticking out.

I also die-cut and embossed the first letter of the name of the guy to whom I was going to send it. I lightly went over it with some distress ink, to highlight the embossed parts.

I always use a light color for the central panel, to be able to write or stamp a message. In this case: Congratulations in Dutch.

When creating a card or other project for a guy, I always keep the embellishments at a minimum. No fuss for a man! 🙂

Sometimes it’s difficult to establish whether the male recipient of your card genuinely likes it for its own merits – for though he may truly appreciate and enjoy the gesture, he might still feel neutral at best about the esthetics of your work. Nevertheless, in this case I think the colleague who received this particular card actually deemed it quite likeable 🙂

So, hope you feel inspired for your first new cards in 2016. As I said this design is very easy to make. If you’d like to try it but don’t know how, check out my free video tutorial!

Next week’s video: Boxing Days – A chipboard storage or gift box to create yourself!

 

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Personalized Treasure Chest for a Man

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Little boxes and chests are great gifts for guys, for you can alter them any way you like to give them a masculine look & feel. Some time ago I altered a little chest with the Craftsman paper collection by Prima Marketing. Today I’m showing you the same basic chest – looking completely different!

This time I used Cold Country papers by 7 Dots Studio, a gorgeous collection in cool gray, black and violet tones. I stamped a sentiment onto the top tag and adhered a photo of our team to the other side – for this was a Goodbye & Thank You gift for our (now former) boss. I also diecut his initials and stamped them with tiny ‘Bedankt’ sentiments – which is Dutch for Thank you.

Like with the Craftsman edition, I also included a refrigerator magnet – neatly kept in place by the magnetized right side of the box. This time it said Thank You So Much.

The ‘real’ present was a group gift: as a group we added a gift card, which fit neatly into this mini chest.

Enjoy the video, thank you for liking & subscribing! You can also follow me on Pinterest.

 

Explosion Box for a Man – Still in Love

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Recently a lovely lady ordered a customized explosion box as a gift for her beloved, to celebrate their love. Today I’m sharing the end results with you, for not only is this the first love-themed explosion box I created, it’s also the first that is intended for a man!

It’s a two-layer explosion box, created out of cardstock and decorated with the Natural paper collection by DCWV. It has several quotes and sentiments about love and family; some I came up with myself, based on what she shared with me about her beloved and their relationship. Others were copied from the Heirloom sticker sheet by Kaisercraft, which is a great source of inspiration for projects about family.

In the center of the explosion box is a tiny wooden treasure chest, super cute, that I altered with papers from the same Natural stack, on top of a copper-colored paint base.

If you feel inspired to create one yourself but don’t know where to start, check out my explosion box tutorial in my Etsy shop, based on my Explosion of Joy version. As a bonus, this tutorial covers a three-layer explosion box, so that’s a whole extra layer compared to this one!

Enjoy the video!

 

Curly die by Crealies:

These tags were made with some tag die sets by Crealies:

Two ATC Cards – for Guys

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Sometimes you don’t have grand words or elaborate messages to share, you just want to say something important to someone. Like Thank You, or some other word of encouragment.

Then an ATC type card might be a great tip for you crafters: they are easy to make, don’t take up lots of time and materials, and they still look awesome!

When you make these for the men in your life you’ll probably feel somewhat limited as to choice of colors and embellishments. Fortunately I found some papers that are not the standard ‘manly’ black, white & grey or navy blue. They are Pyrus and Oxford, both by Basic Grey, if you just throw in some screw brads you’re good to go! 🙂

Anyway, I’m gladly sharing the inspiration with you all today. First is a word of encouragement for a colleague of mine. Created with the Pyrus paper collection:

The second is a Thank You note for my uncle, with the Oxford collection, also by Basic Grey:

Enjoy the video & pics! And stay tuned for next week, when there’ll be an all new design mini album to share again! 🙂

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Playing with Oxford: Two Magnetized Cards

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One cannot have too many Happy Birthday cards in stock, can one? 🙂 For the two magnetized cards I’m sharing with you today, I worked with Basic Grey’s Oxford paper collection again, the first taste of which I got when I created my recent group card fold-out.

The first card is a gatefold, with clean lines and a warm color palette. I used a Hip Hip Hooray seal stamp on a piece of designpaper, then fussy-cut around it and backed it  up with some cardstock for sturdiness.

To pop it up, I used dimensional tape on the Hooray seal.

I matted the back of the card as well, for a consistend look & feel.

When you open the card, there’s a pocket in the middle that holds a tag. The tag shows the personalized birthday wishes, which I printed on the design paper before I matted.

I punched the border of the pocket with an awesome punch by Martha Stewart, the punch-around-the-page Party edge punch. It shows different little presents and a cute little birthday hat. Though I bought this punch as an afterthought when it was on clearance, I have absolutely fallen in love with it since!

 

The second card is a double card with a magnetized closure. It’s still masculine but some of the colors I chose are more vibrant than the first, although both are from the Oxford paper collection.

You can find a free tutorial for this type of card in my blog post on the City Lights card. You’ll only have to adjust the measurements of the card to your liking. My card below is 5⅛ x 5⅛ (13 x 13 cm). I stamped Happy Birthday onto the magnetized closure; this is a great stamp by Stampendous, I’ve used it before – on my City Lights card – and will use it again because I love it!

The inside of the card shows the personalized birthday message, which I printed on a piece of design paper.

To add a little bit of interest I popped up the birthday message with some dimensional tape.

The closure piece is attached to the card with two screw brads, which is one of my favorite embellishments to use on a card for a guy, for they really look like screws! 🙂

 

Hope you enjoyed this post and got some inspiration from it – for not every card has to be filled with complex layering and a lot of embellishments to still be awesome, right. So go ahead and take advantage of your spring or summer holidays to make a stash of gorgeous, magnetized cards for your peeps! 🙂

I’m off to enjoy Pentecost, which in the Netherlands always has a second day, so tomorrow (Monday) I won’t have to go to work for a change, woohoo! 🙂

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Group Card Fold-Out for a Guy

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This coming week we’re saying goodbye to our – now former – boss, thanking him with a gift and of course an accompanying card with our well-wishes. I offered to create a card instead of one us running to the first available store for a relatively random Thank You card. Fortunately for me, my colleagues agreed! 🙂

Since there are seven of us the card had to offer enough real estate for seven personal messages. Also, since I offered this quite impulsively, I only had one night left to create it, so the design had to be relatively simple. And last but not least, our former boss is a man, so the card had to have a masculine feel.

So here’s what I came up with. This magnetic fold-out card is easy to make and offers room for seven personal messages. I used the Oxford paper collection by Basic Grey, which I feel is a mostly masculine paper line. Since I could not use any of the girly stuff I love so much (no roses, no butterflies, no bows and ribbons!) I let the paper speak for itself. The only embellishment I allowed was a magnetic closure with a ribbon pull – which yes, was a ribbon, but which I felt was okay since it was black…

Anyway, here’s the video – hope it inspires you! Oh, and this card would also make a great mini album insert by the way, so even more possibilities!
If you’d like a tutorial for this design, please let me know in the comment section below (click on the title of this post if you don’t see one) or leave me a Tweet!

Enjoy!

City Lights Card

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Here’s an idea for a birthday card for a man. It has style, is on trend, is magnetized, and there’s no girly fuss 😉 . As a bonus, it is fairly easy and quick to make!

Supply list

  • 1 sheet of cardstock, A4 or 30.5 x 30.5 cm (12×12″)
  • 1 double-sided sheet of design paper. I used the Dreamer collection by 7 Dots Studio, the sheet is called City Lights.
  • 1 magnet, 1 washer/thin metal disc (or: 2 magnets)
  • 2 brads
  • Kaisercraft birthday stamp
  • Stampendous birthday stamp
  • wet glue
  • double-sided tape
  • corner rounder or corner chomper
  • distress ink. I used Black Soot by Tim Holtz.
  • paper trimmer
  • scoring tool
  • bone folder

Tutorial

Feel free to let me know if you’d like me to do a (free) tutorial for this type of card! (even years after this post is fine with me, just drop me line or leave a comment – I’m always in for new blog and/or video ideas 🙂 )

More detailed tutorials on a growing number of projects are available in my Etsy shop.

Trail Mix Tag Card – for Her, or for Him

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Some paper collections are gender neutral – or rather, as I’d like to call it, gender encompassing 🙂 : fitting for both men and women, boys and girls. Certain themes will fit almost any occasion and any person, and nature would be one of those categories.

Bo Bunny’s Trail Mix is a fun design paper collection centered around the great outdoors. It has lots of wood, birds, flowers, trees and the coordinating Notepack die-cuts even offer wild animals! Trail Mix fits both male and female recipients of almost all ages and I have used it as such. The first project for which I used this paper was a little mini album for a ten-year-old boy. This tag card was created for a middle-aged (but young at heart 🙂 ) woman.

Tag Card – show & tell with pictures

The front of the card shows a pocket with a punched border. It’s been matted, with a label from Bo Bunny’s Trail Mix Notepack die-cuts on top of that. The top corners of the card have been rounded with the Deco/Stub Corner Chomper by We R Memory Keepers.

The pocket holds a tag – which itself is a die-cut from the Trail Mix Notepack. The card itself has been matted with two pieces of decorative paper, for some added interest and color.

I printed the name of the recipient onto the tag. I added some details, by applying droplets of diamond glitter glue to the flowers on the tag. On the back of the tag I wrote my personal message to her.

The label on the pocket is lifted with some dimensional tape. I stamped the label “Speciaal voor jou” – which is Dutch for “Especially for you.”

Because my personal note was written on the back of the tag in the front pocket, I could mat the back of the card with some nice design paper from the collection.

I emphasized a ldetail in the pattern by tracing it with some Glossy Accents: a little bird, sitting on a tree branch.

 

What gender encompassing paper collections can you recommend?

 

 

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