Climbing High for Dad's Birthday

 Good Morning! The heatwave continues so I'm spending a lot of time in doors playing with the dogs!

My card today is another masculine card - a birthday card for dad, I have used mainly Maker Forte products for the design.

Aren't these Splat Bears adorable. I have stacked them so they look like baby is climbing on dad! What kid doesn't like to wrestle with their daddy!

I started my decorating my background, I used Bokeh Circle Stencil Set. This is 4 stencil but I just used the 2 smaller circle ones, inked one with Blue Moon Ink and the smallest with Icy Mist Ink. 

I stamped the bears using Eclipse Black Ink this gives a crisp color and is suitable for use with Copic markers which I used to color the bears.

I then fussy cut these cute little guys. I often leave a white border when fussy cutting but didn't with these as I am staking them and they wouldn't look right.

Sentiments are a necessity for me so I used You're Truly Fabulous stamp set for this. The Splat Bears do come with sentiments but as I was making a Birthday card for dad this set fit better. I chose the Dad (of course!) and the Happy Birthday. I was going to die cut my sentiments into speech bubbles and the happy birthday as a strip wouldn't fit so I snipped it in to 2 words. I often do this to make my stamps more useable.

As I said I die cut these into speech bubbles. Maker Forte do Simple Sayings which are preprinted sentiments that can be foiled. They make dies for these called Well Said Dies these include speech b bubbles my sentiments fit perfectly in these.

 

I made an A2 landscape card so used A2 Side Folding Card Base for my base. To bring out the color on my background I added a mat of Welsh Dragon Cardstock in-between my base and my stenciled card.

I added my images with foam squares, which I doubled up on my baby bear so he was raised on his dad.

Last of all I added my speech bubbles, these were also added with foam squares giving the design dimension.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my post. If it's given you inspiration please tag me in your designs!

Farmer's Father's Day

Good afternoon, I have kind of stopped blogging my personal cards and ones I've made for commissions so thought I would catch up on a few over the next couple of weeks.

When I was little my dad was a farmer, I can remember him threatening to throw me in a pig pen with a huge sow I was terrified of that pig! He still talks about plowing fields with horses and again as kids we would go to shows watching heavy horses pulling farm equipment demonstrating how farming was done before all the high tech equipment.

So the stamps I have used on the Father's Day card I made him so perfect:

The tractor stamp is from Class Act which unfortunately has been discontinued The Plowman is an Art-Kure stamp and both go so well together. 

I colored both with my polychromo pencils and die cut them using Gina Marie designs Frame Oval Stitched dies. I love the effect these dies give when my image has a background as when you cut with them they give you a frame of your image as you can see in the card. I use foam squares to lift the frame section and then adhere the rest of my image using flat glue.

I matted my card base with black card and masculine papers in a tan patterned and a dark red  both digital papers from Nitwit's paper collections. The word DAD was die cut from the same black card. A few coordinating enamel dots completed the design.

We now live in a farming community and often see the Amish using horses to plow and older farm equipment being used, my Dad would love the area.

I am entering this card into the following challenge:

Color Inspiration Mondays - Anything goes with a self colored image