Happy Monday everyone! It’s Nina-Marie back with you today with a brand new Studio Monday video! With Father’s Day just a week away, I wanted to share some “Dad’s Day” inspiration using some of our newest Simon stamps and dies!

My dad is a preservationist and has a great interest in photography. He is always out taking photos of a wide range of subjects, including lighthouses, maritime, nature and people. This was in the back of my mind when I sat down to create this Father’s Day card for him.

Our Simon Says Stamp Mom and Dad Icons stamp set has a bunch of cute images in it, ranging from a heart, to a grill, a beer mug, a flower … and even a camera! My idea was to use the camera icon with the Big Dad die set (also from Simon) and replace the “a” in “dad” with it.

I also wanted to do something special with the “dad” sentiment. I decided to create an ombre background made up of three rows of the Big Dad die.

I cut the letters from an ombre background that I had colored with Distress Inks (Mermaid Lagoon, Twisted Citron and Squeezed Lemonade) and an Inkylicious Ink Duster brush. I also die cut the teal cardstock panel on the top and bottom only with the Big Dad die. The middle of the panel I left uncut. This is because I planned on in-laying the ombre letters into the teal cardstock on the top and bottom and for the middle, I wanted to pop that row of letters up off the panel. If you watch the video at the bottom of this post, I’ll walk you through how I did this.

You’ll also notice that the letters are shiny. This is because I heat embossed three layers of clear embossing powder on top of the letters to give them extra dimension. You’ll see this demonstrated in the video as well.

The teal cardstock panel is die cut with our new Wonky Rectangle dies and is popped up off of a white A2 cardbase. The recessed letters are adhered with adhesive and the middle row of letters were attached with foam tape.

You’ll also notice the adorable little camera in the middle of the card, replacing the letter “a” in “dad”. I stamped the camera with Intense Black ink and colored it in with Copics. Because the image is so small, I did not color it with a lot of detail. You can see all the colors I used listed below:

• dark gray: N5, N7
• light gray: N1, N3
• teal: BG23, BG13
• green: YG13
• yellow: Y00, Y02, Y15

Here’s a close up look at the coloring of the camera:

To give the camera extra dimension and interest, I attached a large Clear Droplet from Pretty Pink Posh into the lens of the camera; it fit perfectly! I love how the camera looks with the droplet on top! I also put a layer of Glossy Accents over the entire camera body to make it look shiny.

Finally, I heat embossed a small “Happy Father’s Day” sentiment onto back cardstock to adhere under the camera; I popped this up with foam tape also.

This card design is a great clean and simple guy card. I enjoy creating this style of card for guys, since most men are usually “no-frills”. Guy cards can be challenging at times, so by sticking with a clean and simple style, you really can’t go wrong!

You can also adapt this card design to fit the guy in your life you want to give it to. By swapping out the camera icon for another images included in the Mom and Dad Icons stamp set – or for another image from a different stamp set – you can have the card themed as pretty much anything. Also, by changing out the smaller sentiment, you could turn this into a birthday, thank you or thinking of you card too.

Another adjustment you could make to this card is to skip making the ink blended background and instead cut the letters from solid-colors of cardstock.

I hope today’s card has been inspiring to you and that you will give the die cut letter background technique a try! Thanks so much for stopping by and spending time with me today… I will see you next week!

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