Masculine Cards – Deep Blue Crafting Class May 2019

Masculine cards.

How many crafters (mainly female, it has to be said, but even some males as well!) struggle, or claim to struggle with masculine cards? Designing them, making them, having appropriate stamps for them… And yet how many people with “masculine” tastes do we have in our lives who we want to send cards to?!

This is why I decided to make the first Deep Blue Crafting card class all about the masculine! Apart from the fact that I am an engineer by trade, and I love the more masculine design of card, I wanted to prove that it does not have to be difficult or time consuming to come up with card designs to suit the masculine energy in your world. The ladies who came along to the class loved the cards they made, and I hope that you will, too.

For this class we focused on one product suite from the Spring/ Summer catalogue, which is also carrying forwards into the new 2019-2020 annual catalogue. This gives it plenty of longevity for people to use and enjoy it! I am especially pleased that the coordinating embellishments are also carrying over, but more on that shortly. I aimed to show the versatility of the chosen stamp set, and to prove that you don’t need loads of sets to make plenty of different cards. Due to time constraints we stuck to six cards (making five at the class) but there were additional samples available. Including a card that my lovely 7 year old daughter made in a more feminine style to prove that these cards are not only suitable for the masculine!

Would you like to have a look at what I made? I completely forgot to take any photos at the class, either of proceedings or of the finished results, so we will have to hope that the ladies share their cards in the comments below! Here they are:

Classic Garage

We focused on the Classic Garage suite of products for this Masculine Cards class. The stamp set is Geared Up Garage and includes images of a classic car, an oil can, a tool box and others; as well as sentiments to tie in with them. The Garage Gears dies coordinate with the stamped images and cut quite a few of them out, and they also include a number of cogs and gears. One of the dies involves a lot of the cogs linked together, and as you may have seen it makes a fantastic focal point to a card.

The ladies’ favourite card was the Z-fold card, so we went with that as the first make of the evening, even though it was probably the most complicated! It isn’t that complicated, but it involved the most measuring of all the class cards. Let’s go ahead and give you the “how-to”!

Masculine Z-fold instructions

The basis of the card is an A4 sheet of card, cut to 28cm long and scored at 14cm and 7cm. Then cut the card to 10.5cm tall (the opposite way to the scoring) and cut a strip of 2.5cm tall off of one of the pieces. It doesn’t matter which piece you cut the strip from, as they are both the same – you have cut the A4 card in half! Turn the strip so that the folds are on the opposite side of the card (ie scored at 21cm not 7cm) and stick the strip to the base card. You can fold the pieces before or after you stick them, but be sure to only glue the first and last 7cm, so that the mechanism pops up.

Then go ahead and decorate the card. We used the car image and coloured it with blends before sticking it to the front strip, and stamping the sentiment on the strip which is hidden when the card is closed. We stuck the front layers over the stuck-down strip as we felt that gave a neater finish for the design.

Cut the panels for the front to 6.5x10cm for the white card layer, and 6×9.5cm for the Gingham Gala paper. The back panel piece is cut to 13×9.5cm and we stamped repeatedly with the tool box image and stuck the panel to the card base before sticking the mechanism strip in place. We added gears and a sentiment to the front panel for a clean and simple masculine appeal.

Use what you have

Two of the cards use the off-cut from each other – did you spot them?

Yes, the two cards with Old Olive base cards use the positive and negative image from the multi-gear die! If you ink the die gently with your ink pad before cutting it out (making sure not to move it when you put it down!) then it really accentuates the embossed areas within the pattern.

Take another look at the two cards together:

The beauty of using the offcuts in your cards is that you are effectively getting two card toppers for the price of one! And by using Very Vanilla cardstock behind the Whisper White Oil Stain Window, it gives that extra contrast between the two layers. I love how the two cards complement each other yet have quite a different feel to them.

And did you notice the wrench?! I love these embellishments! Often the embellishment packs are only “live” for one catalogue, and don’t carry forwards even if the stamps and dies do. But this time, they have! And I am so pleased. The package contains 16 pieces; 8 of these wrenches and 8 of the old-fashioned type car keys – the ones we used to have before they all became electronic remotes! They are awesome, and really finish off a simple card beautifully.

And finally

The other cards were kept incredibly simple, to keep the time down for the class, and also to show that simple really can be elegant. Using texture stamps like this oil stain creates depth without adding any physical layers to the card. Which is ideal if you have to post your cards to their recipients, due to the cost of additional postage these days. I’m sure we all want to keep our postage costs down where we can. As a note to that, the wrench embellishments are metal and sturdy, but weigh a very small amount and have a low profile so they are great to add to your cards without adding postage cost!

I came up with what I think is a genius way of masking off the panels for the Father’s Day cards – but if you want to know what it is, I’m afraid you will have to come along to class to find out! At least until I patent it or something! I know, evil, right?! Maybe I will share it in a new project sometime… if people let me know they are interested… I will add here that the class ladies also thought it was genius, because it does not involve any masking tape or other sticky substances, and can be reused again and again if you are batch-making cards for Christmas or other events where you need a lot of similar cards. Let me know if you are intrigued.

Come to class!

If this has whetted your appetite to come along to a class, the next one is being held on Wednesday June 12th 2019, at my home in Beggarwood, Basingstoke. We will be using the brand new Daisy Lane stamp set and making use of one of the coordinating punches which go with the set – yes, there’s more than one!

Get over to the Deep Blue Crafting Classes page to sign yourself up for June, and any other classes which fit into your schedule – we already have people booked in as far as December! Each class is guaranteed to be fun and light-hearted, and you will go away having made some lovely projects.

And as always, if you want to purchase the Classic Garage suite items, then head on over to the suite in my online store, where you will find the stamps, dies and embellishments, along with coordinating papers, ribbon and cardstock. The papers and card pack are only available for the rest of the month, or while stocks last, though, so make sure you get them soon if you want them! Also only until the end of the month, the stamps and dies come bundled together with a 10% discount for buying them together. Although both items carry forwards into the new catalogue, this bundle pricing doesn’t! Don’t miss out on saving money…

Until next time, happy crafting!