Masculine Birthday

I have had this card idea rattling around in my head since seeing Lauren Meader sketch late Friday night (thanks for posting it early!) and my friend Nancy

has started a colour and texture challenge that I

wanted to do PLUS I
never make guy cards and my brother's birthday is next month so it was perfect!

The colour/texture challenge was interesting because I didn't' want to colour in grey, black, silver or white so I had to find a solid stamp, not that easy in my collection - I love to colour :)

The card really is formed around the designer metal sheet that I embossed with cuttlebugs tiny mosaics.
I have had the sheet of metal since the summer - I bought it at Stamping Bella (sorry can't find it on

the site). Funny story behind it is that RYAN sold it to me! Yep he knows I am a lover (or sucker) for new things so he showed me a card that Nicky had made using the metal sheet and shock of all shocks it ended up in my bag - lesson here don't think you are safe if Ryan is in the store, he too will show you amazing things to try/buy :) How I miss them!

Once I had the metal embossed I found layers for the rest - the card base is SU's Basic Grey. The DS paper is from Little Yellow Bicycle called "love letters" I picked it up today at Scrapbooker's Paradise (north) - funny thing I always told Gloria I couldn't find much there -yeah ate my words big time today (and was reminded of that) the bag was FULL!

I heat embossed SU's Happy from Happy Everything on SU's shimmery white with black embossing powder and layered it on both basic grey and basic black. "Birthday" is stamped with SU's basic black on shimmery white and I used several circle punches to mount it again with basic grey & black. I sponged the edges on the white so it wasn't so harsh and added a piece of Doodle Bug paper frill from the tuxedo collection (another item from my Scrapbooker's Paradise bag), it was white so again I sponged it with the grey to soften the white.

I really like the effect of the metal, so thanks again Nicky for the inspiration and Ryan for showing :)

thanks for stopping by,

Dana