Welcome to the ICS May Blog Hop with our theme this month being It's a Guy Thing in Black and White. Masculine cards are often a challenge and I must admit, not being able to use any colors other than black and white really had me thinking outside my comfort zone. I hope you enjoy the card design I have created for this theme.
For my card design today, I decided to go back to the basics: ink, paper and stamps. When you have such a bold color combination like black and white, I find that clean and simple card designs are often the best and they work perfectly for masculine cards. I chose to use the retiring Let It Ride stamp set (item #148765) for my focal image and the Crackle Paint Background stamp (cling item #148752) to create texture the background.
To create my card design I chose Basic Black cardstock for the card base and added a layer of Whisper White cardstock for the background. I stamped the Crackle Paint stamp onto the Whisper White layer using Memento Tuxedo Black ink which gave a sharp image that almost resembles the texture of tree bark. I liked the organic feel that it gave to my card.
For the focal layer, I stamped the horse image onto a piece of Basic Black cardstock using Versamark ink and heat embossed it with White Embossing Powder. I die cut the rectangle using one of the dies from the Stitched Rectangles Dies (item #148551) and attached it to the card front with Stampin' Dimensionals. To create the sentiment, I stamped the image from the Itty Bitty Greetings stamp set (item #151331) with Versamark ink onto a scrap of Basic Black cardstock and heat embossed it with White Embossing Powder. To create the sentiment label, I punched out the embossed sentiment using the Classic Label Punch (item #141491) and attached it to the card front using Mini Stampin' Dimensionals.
As this is a masculine card, I wanted to keep the design simple and dramatic. The only embellishment I added was 3 of the large Basic Pearls that I colored using the Dark Basic Black Stampin' Blends Marker to the card front along the side of the focal panel. It was a challenge to not use any color, but I think that the white embossing helps to bring the horse to life on the black cardstock and the crackle paint background provides a nice contrast that stops the design from being too plain. Overall, I am happy with how this design turned out.
Thank you for taking the time to visit my blog today. I hope that my card design has given you some ideas to help you explore creating masculine cards with just black and white.
Now it's time to visit June's blog and see what she has to share with us this month. Just click on the Next button below to visit her blog. We would love it if you would leave us a comment and let us know what you enjoyed about our projects. I hope that you enjoy the rest of our blog hop.
If you live in the U.S and do not already have a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator, please contact me and I would be happy to help you with your creative projects.
Until Next Time
Happy Stamping,
Tricia Butts
Independent Stampin' Up! Demonstrator
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