The Open Sea Masculine Birthday Card

 This was last weeks Sketch Challenge at Split Coast Stampers.  I have not been able to play for the last couple of weeks.  I just saw today's sketch but it looked too frilly for a masculine card.  Though I should give it a try and make it work for a masculine card.  Now that would be a real challenge.  I did make a most needed masculine card using the Open Sea set.  I'm SO glad this is back in the new catalog!  It's a great masculine set.  Though I was hoping for some more masculine papers.  But we always seem to manage to do with what is here, don't we?  This paper is perfect with this set.  I had purchased several packages of it and have used them all up!  

For my card I used Early Espresso for the base of my card.  Then I used the decorative papers for the backgrounds. I layered them in Early Espresso.  I stamped the ship on Whisper White card stock using Night of Navy ink.  My panel is smaller than the one in the sketch but I had to make it smaller.  If I would have kept it that size there would have been way too much white showing on each end. It worked out and turned out just fine.  My nephew will like the card.

This was a fun sketch.  I think it is one that I will be using again.  The focal panel is big enough for many of the stamp sets I have.  

If you have time I highly recommend you give the sketches a try!  It's always fun to learn new layouts.  I keep mine in a photo album and when I'm stuck with an idea I just open the album and find a sketch that fits a stamp that I have in mind.  It works 99% of the time!  And yes, my album has 386 sketches in it.  I collected them all!

Thank you SO much for visiting today,
Wanda