Father's Day?

Okay, so I KNOW it's still a long time until Father's Day rolls around again, but I got a bargain on the Masculine Collage Stamps from Hot Off the Press and couldn't wait to try them out!  I think these will be a real help in handling the challenge of making masculine cards.

For some reason, I really liked the arrow paper with the tools, so I started with that.  I decided to do my stamping on a tan piece of paper, mat it with white, and then do a partial mat with blue (all I had was a scrap anyway!).  My arrow paper was just a leftover piece and wasn't quite as large as I wanted, so I matted it on a striped paper that I had. I inked the edges of the two background papers.  Then, with a makeup sponge, I added a wider soft border of ink to the blue piece. 

The tan was cut and embossed with a Spellbinder's die, then stamped with the tools in black and the sentiments in dark blue.  The "Happy Father's Day" wasn't from the masculine collage set, it was from a small set of clear stamps from Studio g.  It was more complicated than that, however, because there was one block stamp with the three words aligned one on top of the other.  I had to carefully mask off part of the stamp as I applied my ink, so I could stamp each word individually as you see on this card. I drew around the edge of the embossing with a dark blue pen.  I matted this on a piece of white (created by drawing around the outside of my die and cutting it out - then lightly inking the edges).  I wish I had done a light stamping in the background of the focal or at least some shading, before I stamped my focal elements, but I didn't think of it until looking at the card just now.  Another idea for next time!

For the inside, I reversed the background papers, putting the arrows first, then the stripe (both cut with a Resplendent Rectangle die from Spellbinders so a place shows through for writing a note to the recipient).  Here is what that looks like: