Chocolate Birthday

I'm trying to make sure that when I create cards, I do some that will work for men. It's so easy for me to pull out floral stamps or add a lot of ribbons or bling to a card. It's much harder for me to come up with something that's masculine. I think this one, for today's sketch challenge on SCS, works.

I used shades of brown as the main color on the card and accented them with shades of red and yellow. I inked the cake and candles images with markers so I could use different colors for different parts of the images. There's just a *tiny* bit of bling on the candles--some Dazzling Diamonds. I matted the image on red cardstock, then added a photo corner to the top left of the image panel to fill in the white space.

I used a little faux stitching on the panel across the cardfront to add just a little more white to the cardfront. The image panel is set on a piece of Close to Cocoa Prints Series paper. I used the dotted paper because the background is light enough that I could stamp the sentiment directly on the paper. I chose Basic Brown for this since it's just a little darker than the Chocolate Chip ink and I wanted to be sure the sentiment wouldn't blend in to the pattern. I also used the Stamp-a-ma-jig here so I could place the image around the polka dots. The patterned paper is layered on a solid piece of Close to Cocoa cardstock, then layered on the Chocolate Chip cardfront.

This was a pretty quick card to make and one that could be easily reproduced in a few different color schemes. I may have to give that a try to build up my stash of birthday cards.

Materials Used (all from Stampin' Up!);

Eat Cake stamp set, Basic Brown and So Saffron Classic inks, Chocolate Chip, So Saffron, Ruby Red, and Whisper White cardstock, Close to Cocoa Prints Series designer paper, Ruby Red, So Saffron, and Close to Cocoa markers, Dazzling Diamonds, photo corner punch, mat pack and paper piercing tool, white gel pen, dimensionals