 Hi stampers welcome to another week of watch it weekly Wednesday I'm Beth part of the stamping Jill creative team, and I wanted to talk with you today about masculine cards I know sometimes that's a really hard thing to create And so I wanted to give you some tips and tricks that help me and hopefully they can help you too So there are three things that I like to focus on when I'm making a masculine card number one is color I made a little diagram here that shows us some of Stampin' Ups colors. Our neutrals are really really great We have a huge selection of neutral colors. We have our whisper white, very vanilla basic black I love this mellow moss Crumb cake, Knight of Navy, and then we have lots of grays with our gray granite, smokey slate, and basic gray Those are some of my favorite colors to choose from making masculine cards. They just look kind of cool Like more in the cool color area, and they're a little bit more bold Which is really nice when you're making a masculine card. I also wanted to show you some of these colors I'm going to be showing you two stamp sets today that I really like to make masculine cards with and these are the color choices I chose for these samples. I'm going to show you so there's crushed curry real red Tranquil Tide and pumpkin pie. That's one set of the cards. I'm going to show you and then there's mango melody Pineapple punch and blueberry bushel. That's the other set. I'm going to show you So what you'll notice about these colors is that they're not really soft colors. They're a little more bold They stand out a little bit more which makes it really nice for a masculine card because they're not soft and floral and feminine So I think color choices key. That's what you want to start with. In my mind That's what I start with Secondly, you want to keep your projects simple. You don't want to put too much. We call it fluff On your project using a lot of accessories and a lot of stamping. You want to keep them pretty simple That minimalist look is really really popular right now. That really is indicative of a masculine card The third thing that I think makes it is Texture. You want to add texture even though your card is simple because it gives your card dimension So now that I've told you all of these things Let me show you some stamp sets that I really like and let me show you some samples I created with them. The first one I want to show you is en route This one is in the annual catalog and I loved it right when I saw it It's really simple and I think overlooked because it doesn't have dyes that goes along with it And it's just they're kind of small stamps But it has some great paper and some really great colors in that paper So let me show you these samples I focused a lot on our neutral colors that I showed you earlier and then I focused on the pop colors with mango Melody pineapple punch and blueberry bushel. So here's some little cards. I love using punches on masculine cards because they Make that hard edge where it's kind of more of that masculine look. Here's another one I love this punch for a masculine card as well And I added some embossing so that it gave it some more texture this one It's really fun to fray the edges of your ribbon It makes it look not so soft and it kind of still just adds that texture and that pop of color And then here's another washi tape. I really love for texture as well It's a really inexpensive way to add texture to your card and you can make the edges rough Like I said before and then this is just a little journal I picked up at my local big box store And I added my own little punched out embossed stamps to it and some ribbon and I thought that that worked out good Those are some fun ones. So let me move on to another suite We have our classic garage suite that is in the occasions catalog It's kind of fostered toward like Father's Day But there's a lot of possibilities with it that are outside Father's Day that works really well with masculine cards When I first saw the stamp set you immediately think mechanic It goes with cars and oil and tool chests and it's really really great, but then when I looked at the Framelits, I thought it opened up a whole other world of possibilities as well So you've got the really fun mechanic things and then you've got these gears They're kind of more Mechanical but like tinkery mechanical which is a little bit more what my husband's like he likes to tinker and he's kind of a techie guy He's not so much into cars And so this was a little bit more inspiring to me and then I saw the paper Which is really really neat it comes in a six by six stack and it has multiple possibilities The backs of the paper are more solid in color So you could use those to stamp on or use them for other projects and the fronts have those cogs and Gears and they have steering wheels and tires and tools and keys and there's just so much you could do But the thing I love about these are the colors It's kind of that color family I showed you before with the crushed curry the real red the tranquil tide and the pumpkin pie And the basic black is in there too for our neutrals and some grays and things like that So this paper really inspired me when we first got it I pulled out the paper and I started cutting things out with Punches and the die-cuts because they line up so great. Let me show you so out of this Paper I punched out using some of our circle punches All of these cute little gauges you've got kind of gauges You could put on your cards all different sizes and colors I thought that was really really fun and then Continuing on with the circles. You've got these pages that have a bunch of tires in them I used two different sizes the one inch gave me that one and the one and a quarter gave me that one So lots of possibilities there. I also used the punch on this page to get steering wheels So different sizes there This is the one inch punch one and a quarter and one and a half and you could get multiple ones out of that page I thought that was really really fun. And then I moved on to the framelits This page comes and this little guy Cuts out this car So you don't even have to stamp you can just use your die cuts and stick that on a project and it's really cute This one has the gasoline can and it cuts it out in two different colors just like that And you could get a bunch from that page too So I thought the possibilities were really endless even without the stamp set you could make a really lot of cute things So I want to show you a really fun card idea using the six by six piece of designer series paper from this stack Jill showed me this really simple idea You take your six by six piece of designer series paper and you want to cut it down to five and a quarter inches and Then you're gonna score it the six by six way at four inches And then you'll cut a card base. That's five and a half by four and a quarter inches You'll just fold that and that will be your card So think of all the cute possibilities that you could do with this really cute stack of designer series paper You could make multiple masculine cards that are simple and fun and use your paper up, which is great Let me show you a card. I made using this I just added the cute car put or cute car stamp with the Yorah classic Sentiment on there and that's all I did. It was quick and easy There's a lot of elements in this stamp set that you could put in that rectangle Even if you wanted to use your die cuts that you had cut out from the paper You wouldn't even have to stamp if you didn't want to The possibilities are endless. Let me show you some other cards. I've made using this suite of products. I Loved working with the gears. That was probably my favorite and it makes it really easy that there's this these cute gear dies all in different sizes and Shapes they were really fun and it's fun that this came directly from the designer series paper I cut that gear out of the designer series paper These little ones were on that same paper too all I did was add the texture in the background with that stamp and Then put the gears on there using many dimensionals and that made it pop off the page And gave it a lot of texture. This one was fun I just used that car that I die cut out using the framelits and then I had punched out this little compass here and popped up with A dimensional to give it a little bit more texture this one. Happy Father's Day This is a die in that set as well and with the gear in the same color in the back This one I use adventure awaits That one comes from the en route stamp set that I showed you earlier That little saying was really cute and I just used the blends to color the car and it just kind of blended right in these three cards I really liked I wanted to come up with kind of a simple stamping idea Using these gears because I loved them so much So I pulled out our note cards and envelopes and that was the size of card I was going for it was the three and a half by five inch card the gears So I cut those out of the paper first the designer series paper But out of each of those sheets you can only get three of the gears And so I wanted to utilize more of our paper that is in that stack that is so so cute So I cut it out and I actually really loved how these other colors turned out They kind of cut up the design a little bit and so it just looks like gear It's really cute and added the little gear there with the little element I added the subtle embossing folder in the background to give it that texture that I love and just a really simple easy card Lots that you could recreate and quick. It was really simple and quick So I hope you've liked these tips and tricks for making masculine cards. Just remember your color your simplicity and Your texture those are the three items that I love to look for when I make you masculine cards If you like this video or you have other friends that can benefit from learning how to make masculine cards Please share it with them and don't forget to visit stamping Jill calm to see these card ideas on our blog Thanks for watching. Have a great week and we'll see you next week for another watch it weekly Wednesday You