Masculine Monday – personalising with alphabets

Good morning! It's time to start the week with a masculine card and today I want to talk about something really useful - an alphabet. With an alphabet stamp set or the alphabet sizzits dies you can whisk up a card for any male in no time at all.  I've been using the Timeless Type junior alphabet dies in the mini catalogue to personalise cards and I love it. You just pop a small piece of card stock over whichever letters you need and run it through the Big Shot and hey presto! you have a name or message!

Here's a card for a young friend of one of my sons:

I die-cut the letters to make the boy's name and mounted them on Daffodil Delight striped paper from the Brights patterns designer paper stack. The card base was decorated with stars from the Seeing Stars stamp set before mounting the name on top.

Here's another personalised card:

An Always Artichoke card base was stamped with the Fine Flourish background stamp, which I love. I then stamped a piece of Early Espresso card stock with the Sanded background stamp and scored some decorative lines on it to make a label The letters, which were cut out of sandpaper, were mounted on that. A quick sentiment using a stamp-a-majig finished the card.

One of the best things about the alphabet dies is the variety of materials you can cut out: card stock, chipboard, fabric, felt, iron-on fabric, foam, canvas, rubber, fusible fleece, thin metals, thin leather, sandpaper, wood veneer, bubble wrap, self adhesive paper, plastic, perspex... The list is endless and this versatility is very exciting for scrapbook titles and labels as well as for cards.

Here's a little sign I made using an opened out beer can (when I made this, my long-suffering husband began to appreciate my crafting in a way he never had before...!)

I covered a piece of thick cardboard with Chocolate Chip card stock which I'd stamped with the Sanded background stamp, scored with a frame and sponged with Early Espresso ink. I threaded Early Espresso 1/8" tafetta ribbon through holes punched in the top and finally the fabulous metal letters were stuck to the sign.

The Timeless Type junior alphabet die collection is exclusive to Stampin' Up. The dies come in their own box which contains all the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower case, as well as numbers 0 to 9, and various shapes and signs including a heart, a button, a flower, quotation marks and various punctuation symbols etc. You get all of this for £65.95 and I believe it represents a really good investment. If you'd like to order your set, please send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593 and I'll be happy to help you.

I hope you had a great weekend and that your weather was better than ours! Yesterday it rained ALL day and felt more like a November day than a June one. Still, with chess fever still raging through the household I got to curl up with a good book for more than ten minutes! And later I had a lovely time cooking with my daughter too - all in all a top day!

Thank you for visiting me today. If you have a minute tomorrow, do come back and I'll have a coordinated gift set to show you. Have a lovely monday!