Masculine Monday – using French Foliage

Good morning! Welcome to Masculine Monday - my weekly series to inspire you to make cards for the males in your life. Today I've been inspired by Natasha's great sketch on the Clean and Simple Stamping site and my fantastic French Foliage stamp set.

Come and see what I've done with them:

For my background, I decided to use this stunning paper from the Elegant Soirée designer paper range. I love how the tone-on-tone swirls give movement to the card - as if the wind is blowing the leaves about! (Or perhaps that's a bit fanciful for a Monday morning!)

I cut out a label to fit on top, scoring lines round the edges with the scoring blade on my Fiskars trimmer and sponging afterwards to add definition. My sentiment is a mixture of two sentiments - something I love to do and something that's easy when you have markers and a stamp-a-majig.

The leaves were stamped in Old Olive and cut out with my paper snips before being arranged on the card front. I always think leaves are a great image for male cards - or female ones come to that!

Supplies needed for this project:

Stamps: French Foliage, Hopeful Thoughts, Occasional Greetings

Ink: Old Olive, Early Espresso

Card stock: Whisper White

Other: Early Espresso marker, Elegant Soirée designer paper

You can buy any of these supplies from me and I can have them delivered to your address in the UK. Just send me an email or give me a call on 01280 820593.

I hope you had a lovely weekend. After our busy Saturday we spent a quiet family day yesterday. The sun seemed to be making up for lost time so we gathered together a picnic and spent the day wandering over the countryside together. There was a real holiday feeling that made it quite difficult to get back into school mode...

Thank you for popping in today for Masculine Monday. I'll be back tomorrow with some more crafty goodness and I'll hope to see you then.