Well Suited Masculine Birthday Card
This handmade masculine birthday card uses papers from the Well Suited collection found in the new Spring mini catalog from Stampin Up. Handmade card ideas for masculine cards can be challenging, but the Well Suited DSP is full of versatile patterns that you’re sure to find in many men’s closets. So it was the perfect choice for a special card for my father’s 82nd birthday. This design is also the perfect diy Fathers Day card idea.
The designer series paper spoke for itself and sparked the inspiration for the card design. I used a 1/16th inch border all around and snuck in some Basic White cardstock to provide some contrast. By cutting the center strip from the middle of the base layer, I maximized use of my white cardstock. I also leveraged that idea to make the most of the 5×7 inch piece of DSP as well. The blue strip is the flip side of the grey paisley paper.
The Sentiment Drives the Overall Design
While the DSP inspired the color choices for the card, it really was the sentiment that drove the overall design. Including the larger card size.
I knew I wanted to include an age on the card front. After all, celebrating an 82nd birthday is indeed something to celebrate. So that meant that the card needed to be a 5” x 7” card (A7) instead of the standard quarter-letter-sheet size A2. I also wanted to make sure that whatever the sentiment sat upon didn’t completely cover up the DSP.
And it meant that I needed something large enough to hold that whole large sentiment, and not get visually lost in front of the paisley paper. I thought that this frame from the Dandy Garden Laser Cut paper was perfect. Its rectangular edges and cutouts provided a nice contrast to the swirly paisley paper behind it, and the white color played nicely with the white base layer positioned between the Night of Navy card base and the grey DSP. Plus, it was actually large enough to hold all the words.
Because I’m…well…me, I like to maximize my use of my designer series paper. To make 5×7 cards out of a 12×12 sheet, it would seem you could only get two from one piece of paper. But no, not me. I found a way to cut out 4 from one sheet (as long as there’s not a strong directional pattern that must be maintained as landscape or portrait for all 4 cards). You can find my template for cutting 4 5×7 cards from one sheet in the Crafty Friends Club Vault. Just click on The Vault in the menu above to find the PDF file that I created.
Wishing Your Recipient a Happy Birthday
With the paper choices settled, it came time to figure out how to wish my dad a very happy birthday. I used the Well Written dies for the main outside sentiment and cut the words from Night of Navy paper. I wanted to include an age and the Playful Alphabet Dies were the perfect size. But they didn’t include the numerical suffix (the “nd”). So I turned back to Well Written and found the word Friend that quite conveniently ends in “nd”. Problem solved!
On the inside of the card, I combined the Happy Father’s Day sentiment from the Handsomely Suited stamp set with the Happy Birthday from Art Gallery stamp set to create the perfect sentiment. It was important to match font styles and I think these two complement each other nicely.
Here’s the Well Suited Masculine Birthday Card tutorial
This card uses several products from the new January – June 2021 Mini Catalog. You can find all my projects using the Mini Catalog and 2021 Sale-a-Bration products in one spot by following the link in the button below.
More information on the products used in today’s projects can be found below:
Stampin’ Up’s Seasonal Sale!
Monochromatic Christmas Card- Merriest Moments bundle Part 2
