Waltzingmouse Friends Blog Waltz - Pull On Your Boots & Grab Your Hat

It is my favorite time of the month: a blog waltz with Waltzingmouse Stamps. I had to miss last month's due to my travels, falling sick, and bad time management (<-- there I said it ;) Not this month, siree! In fact, I even finished this card a week early, just so that I had no excuse! :) In case you don't know about this fun event, you can read all about it here. Join in next month and waltz along, won't ya? It's a waltz of endless inspiration and super talented ladies!

This waltz's theme is Masculine Cards! Yes, we have those sweeties in our lives that need some love & appreciation. Sure the other gender confuses us: I mean who doesn't jump into the air and squeal "CUTE" when they see glitter, scalloped borders or ribbon? Yet, masculine cards have really grown on me ever since I adopted my first guy-ish stamp set Free Spirit, and they have practically have become my favorite challenge (thanks to Claire) to think outside of the box. So without further ado, here is another man-ly creation using my latest favorite Waltzingmouse stamps:


Stamps: (Back in the Saddle, Way Out West) Waltzingmouse Stamps
Paper: Paper Basics Card Stock - Kraft) Papertrey Ink
Ink: (Memento - Tuxedo Black, Versamark) Tsukineko; (Jenni Bowlin - No. 11 Brown Sugar, Tim Holtz Distress Ink - Vintage Photo) Ranger
Embellishments: (brown thread) stash

This was a really fun card to make. I masked off a frame and stamped on the background from the Way Out West set. Then decided to stamp on a silhouette of the rider with black to make him stand out more. The rest of the background is the woodgrain pattern (which I "heart" oh so much) from Way Out West stamped on with Versamark.

After everything dried, I flipped the card open to scored the frame from the back side of the card to create the frame and distressed the edges with trusty old Vintage Photo. This gave the whole card a nice old, western look (think: yellowing newspaper found flying around in ghost towns!)



The fun part was stamping the sentiment onto a panel. I used the little separator from "Gee Thanks - You're a Real Wing Dinger" to use onto my sentiment "Yeehaw - It's Your Big Day" Amazing what a little bit of masking can do to stretch your stamps' utility.

Next I went nuts with my bone folder and distressed the Kraft card stock, inked it up with more Vintage Photo love. It looked a lil plain, so I decided to hand draw a made-up stitched line with pencil, pierced equal spaced holes onto the pencil line and back-stitched the entire "frame." I tried to make it look as "messy" or machine-stitched as possible - but every stitch was made by hand and lots of love :)

Hope you enjoy this masculine card. It's for a special, big milestone birthday! Can't wait to see what the rest have created. Thanks for stopping by & have a wonderful day...