Masculine Birthday Card

I usually have to make quite a few masculine birthday cards. I most always try to make my rustic and rugged. To make that look I distress quite a bit. I like the look especially for male cards. Today I went with a Western theme, for no particular reason except I think Western works well when distressed. I also make quite a few Western cards for girls too! Western can be male or female! Today's card I distressed two panels, the stamped horse panel and the paisley panel used to frame the horses. I used Stampin Up's Wanted stamp of the horse and of the Western rosette medallion. I inked up the horse stamp with Tuxedo Brown ink and stamped it three times without inking up again to make it look like the horse is in motion. This is called stamping off. I used my Cuttlebug Paisley embossing folder with an almond cream cardstock from Bazzil but I inked the inside of the folder first with Ranger Distress Walnut Stain ink, so the finished effect is like tooled leather. You can't see much of that here, but I sure love how it looks! I distressed the edges of both panels with a paper distressor first, then I inked with black stamp ink and some brown stamp ink. I sponged the horse panel with some yellow and orange rose ink. I stamped the rosette medallion with black ink and touched it up with a gold gel pen on the stars and dots in the medallion. The black braid is lanyard lacing braided and pulled through a copper brad and wrapped and adhered on the back of the copper metallic cardstock. I found the copper letter brads at Michael's and spelled out happy birthday. I have had that lizard brad for several years and can't remember where I found it, but I'm glad I had it to use here! This was a very fun card to make!