Masculine Designs for Cards

Since the vast majority of us who make cards for Operation Write Home are women, many of the cards we make feature flowers, butterflies, and other elements that aren't suitable to send to a man or to a child back home.  Here are some examples of recent cards that aren't girly.

This Gartner Studios 12x12 paper from Big Lots caught my eye.  Twenty-four sheets of one design, one side with a pattern, the other solid, paper with a white core that lends itself to be embossed and then sanded to show the embossing...sold!  

One pack is "Paris" with dark brown on the back, and the other is "World Map" with dark red on the back.  A section of the map has script written on it so I used the back of that part.  The Paris paper is a collage of two photos of carriages and three of the Eiffel Tower.  Since the Eiffel Tower isn't an image I'd normally use for cards for Operation Write Home, I used the brown side of those sections.

The six cards were made with one sheet of each design, meaning I can still make more than 130 cards, depending on the sketch I use.  These used no sketch - I was just playing around this time.

When I read on an online forum that Jo-Ann's had a sale on packs of 12x12 Darice paper with an embossing folder included, I got some, of course.  There was a black and white stack, a neutral one, and one with bright colors, so all three came home with me.  It's very thick textured paper with white on the reverse side.  The black and white makes great masculine cards.  Both stamps are from Inkadinkadoo and must be discontinued because they were at Mighty Dollar.  To keep from forgetting what papers I have, I cut one sheet of each of the ten designs into 6x6 pieces and put them into my go-to box of papers.  The 12x12 stacks are out of sight in a drawer, so I forget what I have unless they're in my 6x6 box.

During the 2014 Operation Write Home Memorial Day Blog Hop I visited The Efficient Crafter's blog where I found a cutting formula for using four pieces of 12x12 double sided paper to make four cards.  It sounds like a lot of paper for just four cards, but that includes four card bases, the the four pieces for each card, plus the matting pieces for the top three.  No need to go to the stash of paper to find coordinating solids for matting.  It's all there.  I used four sheets from the "Best Occasion" collection from Wal-Mart and the "Hello Handsome" stamp from the Hero Arts OWH fund raiser set. 

Red, white, and blue are good for Operation Write Home cards, and I combined those colors with a goal of using each of the OWH sketches found on their website.  I got really tired of these colors and only got to Sketch 24.  The dimensional stickers are Sticko by EKSuccess.  The flag card is labor intensive and uses the Martha Stewart Doily Lace edge punch.  I really like the way it turned out.