A Masculine Anniversary Card Rich with Color and Texture

Hello!

You may remember last week’s anniversary card, the white one with the bird-in-a-heart stamp colored with Q-tips and pastels. It was the puzzle with the final piece heading for insertion. (You can see it here.) I had said I didn’t “do” white very often. Well, today’s card is more my speed – a masculine anniversary card rich with color, texture and a yummy, luscious bow. That darned bow cost me hours of anxiety, but… more on that in a moment.

What colors make a masculine anniversary card?

This was the first of the two cards, and I wanted to use his favorite color, which is purple.

The color combo took me awhile to come up with. Using purple was a given, but I didn’t want to use lavender as the contrasting color. Looked a little too girly for my taste. Red was too “Red Hat Club-by” and yellow looked like school graduation colors. Hmmm…

I finally grabbed this turquoise out of my stash, which didn’t seem likely in the beginning. But hey, it worked beautifully! This might be my new favorite combo!

I didn’t want to cover the turquoise too much, so I heat embossed my favorite background stamp which is quite manly. And honestly, it’s such a detailed stamp that it doesn’t need much embellishment.

But I did want a little something to add more texture, so I decided to use a bit of very open weave net ribbon shot through with gold threads. More texture – yum.

The oddly difficult task of choosing a focal point

By now, all I needed was a focal point, and this being an extra special, romantic card, I wanted it to be a heart with a textile behind it. So I tried one. Two, Three. This way and that, I tried a total of five (that’s 5!) hearts. I embossed a purple heart and punched a tiny heart out of its middle. I painted a tiny wood heart and stamped an “I love you” onto it (and promptly wiped it off – it didn’t look right). I stamped a piece of kraft paper with the same stamp as the card cover and even inked the edges. And I even colored a clear plastic gemsone heart with a pink Copic, to no avail. What to do?

I finally asked my daughter for her opinion, and she promptly reached into one of my “doodad jars” and pulled out a darling piece of jewelry chain that had a tiny bronze/gemstone heart attached. Eureka!

I had already tied the “Colleen Bow” (also known as a messy bow) out of coffee-colored seam binding and just needed the heart to finish it off (without the chain).  I think it’s perfect.

Almost finished…

Then I turned my attention to the inside.

I nearly always mat the inside card stock to add color and weight to the card. There’s nothing worse than a card that’s gorgeous on the outside with a wimpy, no-extra-layer inside. Not to mention that even moderate decorations outside can cause the card to buckle under its own weight if the inside isn’t beefed up a bit.

I stamped the kraft paper with the same stamp as used on the front piece. In fact, to make a watermark effect, I stamped it with the same clear embossing ink and let it dry. It’s a technique that adds interest to plain, sometimes boring card stock.

The greeting was two individual stamps, and the teensy love note at the bottom was a 3-piece stamp. (It came from a set of individual words that you could put together for any number of sentiments.)

So there you have it – the masculine anniversary card I made for my and Mr. Right’s First Anniversary, loaded with color and texture with a dash of sentimental sparkliness. Guys like a bit of sparkly too.

Now it’s your turn. Share a photo of an anniversary card so that we may all oooh and ahhh over it. And let us know how you used it! We love reading romantic stories!

Hugs!