I made this card for my son’s 17th Birthday.  My clients always comment to me about how difficult cards for guys are to make.  I find some of the tricks I use for any type of masculine cards is to keep the design simple and the colours farily neutral.  I used the Picture Perfect Birthday stamp set, which is a Two-Step stamping set.  With one of Stampin’ Up! Two-Step stamping sets, there are a couple of stamp images used to complete the image.   For example, the background of the candle is one stamp and the layer of stripes and dots are another layer and the candle flame is the last step. And with the stamp set in easy-to-see thru photopolymer, it is very easy to line up all the parts.

For colours, I based my colour scheme on the True Gentleman’s Designer Series Paper:  Crumb Cake, Night of Navy and  Tranquil Tide.  I think this is a great colour scheme for masculine cards.  And good news, that even though there is a colour revamp happening with Stampin’ Up! (see more about the colour refresh here), all of these colours are still available.

This card opens in a different way, or as we demonstrator call it, a fancy fold.  The style of this card is called a “gate fold’, which means it opens from the front.

Gate Fold Card

• Card stock base is  4 1/4″ x 8 1/2″
• Score each end at 2 1/8″
• Decorate front panels.
• Secure with a belly band  that pulls off.  Wrap a piece of  1-2″ piece of Designer Paper around the card and secure with a saying or stamped image on the front.

On the inside of the card, I stamped the candle images again–17 times–for my 17 year old’s birthday!  The sayings are also from the Picture Perfect Birthday stamp set.

You can pick up the Picture Perfect Birthday stamp set HERE in my ONLINE STORE.