#Masculine #CAS #CleanAndSimple Stamped Card for Father's Day

I have always enjoyed knowing that I could always donate handmade cards and card fronts from my mad SU Demo swapping days to the non profit From Our Hearts organization.  I just didn't have the heart to throw away perfectly gorgeous card fronts lovingly and diligently hand crafted by my group of SU Demo friends.  When I look at the total count of cards donated to FOH, I'm dumbfounded that I swapped that much! Those were some amazing fun days!!

Our country is finally drawing down our troops overseas so our men and women are coming home!! Thus there just aren't that many locations for FOH to send boxes to anymore. With their last deadline for cards approaching, I've been working feverishly to convert the stash of SU card fronts my good friend Eva found when she was moving at the end of last year, AND yet another stash of SU card fronts I found while purging my parent's house.  (I still have about a dozen or so boxes of scrapping stuff of my own that I've stubbornly put off sorting that probably comprise of half completed class kits, etc.)

Part of the stash my friend Eva gave me were boxes of supplies she no longer wanted because the pre fab stuff no longer fits her style.  I asked her for them since I figured I could use them to make cards for the troops or forward the supplies for FOH's card making events.  But, alas, FOH is closing down.....

In her stash, I found a few ziplock bags of pre-cut coordinating cardstock that just needed to be stamped and embellished.  I found some appropriately sized stamp images and this is what I came up with. Considering all of my scrapping stuff is packed up and I only had my tool bag, this card is pretty much the most basic and flat design I've ever come up with, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I figured the color scheme was masculine so I chose the father son image from the SU Seaside Sketches set. Then I arranged various sentiments from my Verve Father Figure clear stamp set on the base in lieu of background stamps, patterned paper, embossing folders, etc.  I had no embellishments and didn't feel like opening up a few boxes to search for appropriate ones.  Y'all know what an ordeal that is! So I just used the one long dotted border the embellishment by using a coordinating ink color to tie in with the contrasting cardstock color.

My card apparently falls along the lines of this week's CAS316 No Patterned Paper Clean and Simple Weekly Challenge over at Splitcoast. 

Lol, I further challenged myself because I forgot to dig out my stack of clear acrylic blocks so I just improvised and used the back of a very small SU clamp shell case.  While I was working on this project, I was really surprised that most all of my SU dye ink pads are still juicy.  I did have to re-ink my black ink pad to add greetings on some other cards I was putting together using paper pieced embellishments obtained again from my mad swap days.  

Unfortunately, there was only enough to make 8 cards in this set because that's how many pieces were pre-cut.

Conversely, I'm grateful my good friend Eva FORTUNATELY did already pre-cut these 8 blank card sets so that all I had to do was stamp and adhere them together.

These 8 cards go out to the women in our US forces overseas via From Our Hearts.  Your sacrifice is so very much appreciated by those of us back home.  Thank you for all you do!

FYI: From Our Hearts will be mailing off boxes of hand made cards through May 2015, so click on their logo below if you want to find out more info on how to contribute before they close down. :)

I'll update my tally in a few days as I'm trying to finish up with as many cards as I can manage to send in this last shipment.

"I'm So Glad You're My ... Husband (Father's Day)" Card
Paper: SU Naturals CS, SU Mellow Moss, SU Night of Navy
Stamps: SU Seaside Sketches (father son image); Verve Father Figure (sentiments)
Ink: SU Mellow Moss, SU Night of Navy
Embellishments: None
Size: 4.25" x 5.25" rectangular