She said, he said

It's amazing the difference a colourway makes.  The same card in different papers can be feminine, masculine or even either.

The cards were made with one of the Spellbinders "Cut, Fold and Tuck"™ dies on double-sided paper.  The motif was matted on to a plain X-Cut frame and a patterned card with a couple of matted X-Cut Tags ready for the greeting.

The matting on this card was a paper straw sheet from The Works - it can be die-cut and takes colour well.

The cards will probably be gussied up a bit once I have someone in mind to send them to; flowers and ribbon for feminine with perhaps a pearl or three (or six or eight or ...) and gemstones to embellish a masculine card.

Take a second look (and ignore the description on the box)

Often enough, dies are given descriptive names, especially seasonal ones.  If you squint sideways at some of them, they can be used otherwise.  For example, the newish docrafts  Build-A-Scene Vintage Hot Air Balloon, turned upside down, will be a good Christmas bauble later on this year (and the Marianne bauble dies I have would make good balloons).  I have a snowflakey border die which looked far too dynamic for a gentle snowfall.

This was for a friend with a birthday near Fireworks Night.

I used the Memory Box Frostyville Border Die™ because I thought it looked like an exuberant firework display.  I cut it from gold card, coloured the various flourishes and glued it to the front of a stepper card.  I had some deep blue glitter card for a background and rough-cut a border of houses out of black card.  The star/snowflake waste from the die was added to the sky.

Steam Acetate

I had a better go with acetate - a good job as I had a birthday to make a card for (and a male birthday at that).  I think just about everything on this card is from docrafts - the embossing folder was a Sizzix Tim Holtz one from when docrafts were doing Sizzix (please assume the ™ symbols where appropriate).

I used some dark blue core'dinations card for the first layer and cut a circle and tag out of it before layering some Chronology backing paper over it. What you can't see, you don't miss.  I stamped the astrolabe from the cover gift stamp and cut it out, including cutting the middle bits; once coloured, this was glued onto the circle I'd liberated from the dark blue card.

I embossed the acetate with a clock/watch folder and put the astrolabe and message tag on top - putting the double-sided tape under the toppers so it wouldn't show through.