(Another) One for the Boys

Despite making cards for men being universally considered as the hardest task, I've just had a second success in one week. On Monday, I got inspired by this month's Get Funky! Boys Boys Boys challenge and made a card for my cousin's birthday next week, along with several spares for upcoming male birthdays. Today, having wimpily abandoned my plan to watch live cricket on the grounds of less than perfect sunny warm weather and the probability (which has been realised) of a Surrey defeat, I settled down to listen to the Lord's Test, watch Le Tour de France time trial and see if I could come up with something for the Docrafts Creativity challenge that Katy had set this week.

Katy alternates sketch layout challenges with inspiration challenges. This week's was one of the latter, which provide opportunities to be as creative as one likes, as long as there's something to link the finished product with the original photograph. Katy, either cheekily or cleverly, gave us a very Christmassy photograph, which has divided the entrants so far. Several took encouragement to start on their festive card making; others moaned that it was far too early and did anything but. I wasn't in the mood to make a Christmas card but didn't stand firmly in the latter camp either, having very happily knocked off 40-something of this year's Christmas cards in early-January.

I did like the five circles in a row component of the photograph and, particularly, the single element stood forward of the background. It came to me that each of the circles could bear a letter of someone's name (as long as it was five letters long) and that the forward element could be attached to the card on a strip of acetate, and so dangle in front, rather than being fixed flat. Running through my friends and relatives with appropriate names, I quickly came to my eldest nephew, whose birthday is in November. So, sort of planning ahead, but not quite as far as Christmas (155 sleeps to go, by the way). I hadn't necessarily intended to use the red and silver colours from the photograph but as my nephew's a Liverpool fan (no idea why; he lives in Somerset and his father supports Man City), it seemed a good plan.

Having decided to include letters, I then had to produce them. I thought about using some wrongly coloured chipboard ones as templates and cutting them out but was fearful that I wouldn't be able to do it neatly enough. I then remembered that I had bought a set of Papermania alphabet stamps a while back on the grounds that they were a craft box essential. So essential, of course, that I had never used them and almost forgotten about them! When I tracked them down, I also found an unused round "Happy Birthday" stamp, which gave me the start of an idea for the dangly component.

Progress from there was swift. I stamped the letters on textured red card with VersaColour silver (92) pigment ink and heat embossed them with Crafter's Companion metallic silver embossing powder. That combination of products gave a lovely effect, even though only single embossing was practicable. I backed the red circles with scalloped circles of textured matt silver card, which seemed to complement the embossing better than shiny mirror-board. I did indulge in the latter to back the sparkly red background and for the triple stripes, which seemed to add an appropriate sporty touch and were far easier to cut than I'd imagined. A pearly red gem in each of the cutaway corners and the basic card was done.

This just left me to make the dangler (for which I'm sure there's a more formal name that I don't know). Using a bit more mirror-board was an easy decision but I wanted to add some depth and weight to help it hang well. It occurred to me that fun foam might work well but I wasn't sure how to cut a circle from it. I knew that punches weren't up to its thickness but I wondered whether a Nestabilities die cut in the Cuttlebug might work. The answer, once I tried it, was with ease: result! I needed something to go in the dangler's middle: firstly to finish it off and secondly as I had got a smudge of silver ink there from the stamp. A silver sequin topped with a clear star gem did the trick. I toyed with adding a little ribbon bow but decided it wasn't quite the right colour red, which saved me the trouble of deciding whether a bow on a male card was appropriate.

Having visited the Crafter's Companion website to make sure I'd remembered correctly about the apostrophe and where to stick it (something of an obsession of mine), I discovered that their monthly challenge was One for the Boys. I thought I'd put this card in for that as well, as an example of their marvellous embossing powder, which I love. My only gripe with it is that the container lid isn't removable so getting the excess powder back into the pot - we crafters hate to waste anything - is a fiddly and time-consuming task. Perhaps the next release could have a screw top lid?

OK boys, you've had a more than disproportionate amount of my crafting energy and attention recently. I will gladly admit to having enjoyed it greatly, and having discovered layouts, styles and combinations that I can readily use for many purposes, but the next projects will be firmly focussed on the girls. They'll have to be: September is bursting girlie birthdays.  BTW, did you work out my nephew's name yet?