Tag Archives: card for a guy

Three Very Easy Cards, The K.I.S.S. Way

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Leonardo da Vinci once said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and often I apply that to my paper craft projects: finding beauty in simple designs, by playing with colors or showcasing design paper.

Or even more down to earth than that, keeping it as simple as I can. This is what in project management is called the KISS principle btw: “Keep it Simple, Stupid”. In other words don’t overthink and don’t make things unnecessarily complicated.

Anyway, today I’m sharing three tips with you to keep your card making as simple as possible, yet still very presentable!

K.I.S.S. Card Tip 1: Purchase a lovely card, and mat it onto a piece of double-sided design paper. Very quick & easy, and it looks great. Plus, the inside of your card automatically looks sophisticated as well, with your paper being double-sided.

K.I.S.S. Card Tip 2: Purchase a lovely card, and add a simple decoration, but nothing elaborate. For instance, you could add only 1 bow or flower, or a couple of bling pieces. Or you can do as I did: I bought a large postcard at a museum (yes, those pastries were counted as art, in the sense that they were part of a photo collection…) and added some glitter glue lettering.

K.I.S.S. Card Tip 3: Mat a piece of design paper onto a white card; print or stamp a sentiment, die-cut a label shape around it and add it to the card. These are especially great when you’re creating for someone who’s not into all of that pinky fluffy stuff 🙂

Hope you enjoyed these tips, they can make your card making life a whole lot easier, while still being able to send nice hand-crafted cards to everyone you care to send one to.

Enjoy your week!

Two Shutter-cards Done-Up Differently: Masculine & Feminine

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You can know a design theoretically, but there’s nothing like actually seeing it in your hands, with design paper and decorations! Especially if you make different versions, with different colors, themes, occasions and recipients.

So this week I’m sharing the pretty well-known shutter-card design, done in two different ways: one is masculine, the other feminine.

Enjoy! And if you want a third variation, check out my Christmas version!

Soccer-themed Birthday Card

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What birthday card to make for that soccer-loving friend or relative? How about a soccer-themed card, decorated with a custom-printed birthday wish, a Johan Cruijff tag and a wooden letter ‘K’ for his first name. With Stickles, of course.

This time the video contains a super short overview. More details in the pictures below 🙂

 

The 14 rules of Johan Cruijff

 

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Tri-shutter Birthday Card for a Guy

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Hi all!

Today I’m sharing another idea for a birthday card to send to a man in your life. As for its shape, it’s a so-called tri-shutter card. I cut this one with a special die (by Crealies), but you can cut these yourself as well, just check out my free video tutorial, which I’ll embed again at the end of this blog post for your convenience.

For decoration I used Oxford, a nicely colorful collection by Basic Grey with mostly masculine overtones. I also did some stamping: a circle-shaped Happy Birthday stamp on the front, and some smaller gift-wrapped presents on the other panels which I fussy-cut and then lifted with some dimensional tape. And last but not least a Kaisercraft birthday sentiment which I stamped in two colors on the center panel.

 

A tri-shutter card fits into a regular envelope
Kaisercraft sentiment stamp on the center panel, stamped in two colors

My video tutorial on how to make a tri-shutter card:

 

Card for a Guy with A Proper Gentleman

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This week I’m sharing a card for a guy – with some extra embellishment tips! I used Graphic 45’s wonderful A Proper Gentleman collection, which I still can’t get enough of 🙂

Enjoy the video!

 

Also check out my Man About Town sturdio album, which I made with the same paper collection!

 

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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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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 5â…› x 5â…› (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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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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Birthday card – for a guy

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It’s not always easy to come up with original design ideas for a guy. That’s why I thought I’d share mine, to give some inspiration. Like the design in one of my previous posts, I took my Graphic 45’s A Proper Gentleman again – but this time used some different designs from the stack.
Enjoy!

Click here if you can’t see any video below.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje hieronder niet kunt zien.

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How to create a mini wallet birthday card (for a guy)

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There’s of course many different ways to create a mini wallet. Here’s one that I designed and created myself, and I’d like to show you how I did it – since it’s so simple it would be a shame not to share! (and it will only take about 5 minutes of your precious time!)

I used Graphic 45’s design paper stack A Proper Gentleman to decorate, since it is perfect for creating a birthday card (or any kind of card) for a guy.

Click here if you can’t see the video below.

 

Klik hier als je het filmpje hieronder niet kunt zien.

Dutch translation:
Leuk kadokaarthoudertje, prima als verjaardagskaart te gebruiken. Ik was al een tijdje op zoek naar papier dat voor een man geschikt zou zijn (geen bloemetjes, vlindertjes en felgekleurde sierpatroontjes) en was dan ook blij met de ontdekking van dit papier van Graphic 45: A Proper Gentleman. Ideaal om naar een man te sturen!

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