My brother-in-law’s birthday is coming up in a week, so I needed a masculine card. When he isn’t at one of his children’s many baseball games, he’s usually building something – so I got out my Totally Tool set.

Next up, for me, is determining layout. I turned to the latest Retro Sketch (rs47).

The tool images were stamped, colored (with Copics), and then cut out.

I didn’t have a birthday greeting that worked in the space, so I used a font instead. I did print it with a brown fill but it wasn’t right and instead of spending all night tweaking it, I just went over the color with my StampinUp Crumb Cake marker. I tried to stay inside the lines, but didn’t worry about full coverage as I thought the different bits of colors would add interest/depth.

One final touch was to add a couple staples. I know some folks don’t like staples, but I don’t mind them – especially when they reinforce a theme. I really like how they finish off the card.

Oh, I don’t mind staples, but I don’t like stuff showing on the inside of my cards. I added the staples to the white panel only and then taped it to the card base. This is fine for me as they are just decorative and not functional. If I needed them to be functational I would have decorated the inside so they were covered up.

Thanks for taking a peek!