Tomorrow is my Father-in-Laws last day of work. So what better occasion than retirement, gives me a chance to make a card. He`s a very wonderful person and has done so much for me and my family, so the least I could do is make a nice card to celebrate his last day.

On this card I used colours that are suitable for a masculine card. I chose Not Quite Navy, Sage Shadow, and I found a sheet of Basic Grey Dp laying around and used a small strip. For the stamps I have the Best Bar Codes set, in it is a `congratulation you did it` stamp that fit the bill. Also, I have an old set called To The Finish and you can see I used the checkered flags stamp(the checkered flags seemed appropriate for someone who just finished working). For that accent I stamped the checkered on some whisper white card stock then with my X-acto knife i cut it out and glued it in place. The other embellishments I used were my usual brads and paper piercer. I really find it adds so much to a card and its so easy to do.

Well I hope you enjoy my latest card. Thanks for looking.

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Today's sketch challenge on SCS is awesome. Also today is a birthday of a good friend of mine, Artistic Avenger. I don't know how old she is so don't ask.

Now back to the card, and as you have probably guessed it's her birthday card. I'm really please with how it turned out. First the layout is excellent, and secondly I really like the colours I chose to use (Chocolate Chip, Sage Shadow, Very Vanilla, and some Basic Grey Dp). I used stamps from the Bodacious Bouquet set and a dollar store find an Inkadinkado sentiment stamp. I always like to finish my card off with some added touches, so on this card I added a couple of aged copper brads. I also used my paper piercer to make a line of piercings along the bottom edge of the Sage Shadow piece.

Also, today I recieved some good news that I was accepted to be on the RAK group on SCS, and I'm the first man to have that honor. I hope all recipients of my RAK cards will like them. For anyone that doesn't know RAK stands for Random Acts of Kindness.

Hope you enjoy this card and thank you to everyone who took a look at my blog today.

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Well as I had mentioned in my first log I would share some images of crafts I did some time ago. Both of these custom boxes were made as the gift wrap for a present, and I'm sure glad the recipients didn't tear them apart to get to the present out. I know that both are still in really good shape. After all they were made of double corrugated cardboard. In all each took me about one week to complete. You can see the theme of the boxes are well known, but every design on the box was hand drawn and then hand painted. As much fun as it was to make them I'm glad I don't make them too often.

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The challenge this week was to follow a layout (see card above), and to use black as an accent to make the colours POP. I send out a challenge to my friends every Sunday, then they have one week to complete their card.

For my card that I created, I used Cool Caribbean, More Mustard, Certainly Celery and Basic Black card stock. For the main image I used Love Matters and on the Cool Caribbean I used my Canvas BG. A bit of black gingham, some Stampin' Up (SU) markers and a few black brads later, I have the card you see above. Oh.....I took my paper piercer and pierced a line across the card near the bottom.

Look back here next week to take a look at what I make for challenge #13.

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This is my first post and I am a man who likes to do crafts. Not that there's a problem with that! It makes me happy to create something out of nothing, and especially when it's for someone special. I will post some of my earlier creations here soon, so you can see what I've made. Most of the crafts which I make these days are cards. I'll post them here and in my gallery on Splitcoaststampers (SCS).

I hope you'll enjoy what I do here.

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This weeks featured stamper on Splitcoaststampers (SCS) is KED. I didn't have any trouble finding a card to choose for casing. Here's a link to the challenge post and it has link to KED's gallery. http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=252341
Here the card I chose to case from KED's gallery, http://www.splitcoaststampers.com/gallery/photo/537439?cat=500&ppuser=92377 , I chose this for the nice layout and overall design. I made a few changes to the card, which I was supposed to do. I changed the colours used as well as the flower and the theme. One change in particular is the brackets I used versus KED's. My brackets are made using the Round Tab Punch that Stampin' Up sells, KED's were made using a stamp from the Office Accoutrement set which you can find in the 2007 Spring Mini catalogue from Stampin' Up. Though the biggest change I made was using a staple to attach the (wish) tab, which I really think makes the card.

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