Paru's Card Making Challenges: Masculine

I'm excited to be the Guest Designer for the June challenge at Paru's Card Making Challenges where the theme is Masculine!

I decided to use some Essentials by Ellen products from the latest release (and an older one, too!) and my favourite, Catherine Pooler inks. 

Plaids, straight clean lines and graphic shapes are perfect for masculine cards, so I started by using Plaid Maker to create a bold plaid background with Melon Ice. This may not always be considered a 'masculine' colour, but teaming it up with black and grey definitely gives it a modern masculine look. I ended the plaid on one edge to leave room for my sentiment.  I stamped the biggest stripe with Black Jack ink to create a border between the plaid and my sentiment area.

I added accents with Black Jack and stamped my sentiment (from Totally Random Sayings, Volume 2) in Midnight ink. 

I stamped and die cut a coffee cup from Oh Frappe and created a coffee sleeve with a piece of white cardstock I had stamped with the solid square stamp in Melon Ice ink.

I tied my tag in to the card by using a lot of the same elements. My plaid is smaller, to reflect the smaller size of the tag and I used the same stripe, a solid area of Melon Ice inking and the little heart with stickles in it.