Be Inspired Challenge #15!

After a nice, long Memorial Day weekend I was very happy to be back to stamping! Which means I was also excited to play with Beate's inspiration piece! I needed a nice, masculine card since its also my husband's birthday. (Love you Honey! We got to go on a date too! A nice quiet lunch to ourselves and a very late movie- Prince Caspian!) Anyway...the card...I took the masculine-looking colors and created something TOTALLY different for me! Wow!

I started by playing with this tool:

Anyone know what it is? I sure don't! Something from Making Memories, obviously. My friend was cleaning out her craft room and has never had any luck using this so she gave it to me to try. Not having any idea how its supposed to work, it was kind of a pain! But! I have a circle cutter now! I thought I'd go with these oval cards I saw here ...but that didn't quite work. I got a huge circle from my Blue Bayou card stock! So, I cut the circle in half...(ish...) and got this. I mounted it on a piece of More Mustard card stock. I added a rectangle of Soft Sky thinking for the greeting and the writing...but then it would show oddly... So I stamped this on the inside:

and wrote my own message on the inside of the Bayou half circle! Then I added the Close to Cocoa tab from my super cool Round Tab Punch, and attached it with Silver Brads. The front of the Bayou piece I stamped weirdly with the bottom of one of the Boho Background stamps. The "love you" on the Cocoa comes from the stamp set Sweet Thing. All the ink is Basic Black. Happy Birthday Burt!