All about the Base-ball

As it's Father's Day on Sunday I thought I'd have a play with my Baseball Dad die set which I just love as it has lots of fun elements for those tricky masculine cards and can be used for much more than just Father's Day cards.

I started with a Father's Day card, a very simple one.   I used the technique I shared on Facebook Live on Sunday (video will be on YouTube channel just as soon as we figure out the technicalities!) for colouring embossing folders with water based brush pens.   For this one I die cut a circle of white card, embossed it with Altenew's Linked Ovals folder and then just ran one of the brush markers over the raised areas.   I then used a similar blue card to die cut the baseball hat elements and used a couple of shades of blue ink to darken some of the layers to add to the 3D realism.  I decided to stick with just red white and blue for my colours so added a red background to match the die cut stitching on the ball and used the same blues on the big and little (father and son) baseball bats.   For those I die cut from kraft card and just ink blendded some darker brown ink on the bottoms again to add to the 3D look.  I added the die cut sentiment from the Baseball Dad die to finish.

I also wanted a masculine congratulations card and thought the die set would be perfect for that too.   This time I die cut several bats from woodgrain card and ink blended a couple of shades of brown to give them that rounded look again.   I also die cut some smaller balls from one of my circle die sets and drew the stitched lines on by hand (just by using one of the circles to draw around at the top and bottom of each ball) using a sharp red pencil.   I kept with the red and blue them again so added red handles to all the bat and shaded the edges to match the bats.    For the sentiment I made it on the computer as I wanted something to match theme.  I used the largest circle die in the set to cut it out and then added the stitched details to bring it all together.   Perfect for those boys who will be getting exam results in a few weeks....   You could fill the card with lots of hats and add a "hats off to you" sentiment for another card on the same theme.

Hope that's given you a few ideas for those sometimes tricky masculine cards - its one of my favourite die sets as you can make really cool looking cards with it which I think is hard for those teenage boy years!

Happy Crafting!

Tara