52 cards challenge - week 23

Just under the wire again ...... the new prompt goes live soon!  The prompt for week 23 is 'manly' cards.

The Christmas card came about because I was doing a set of Scandinavian-ish cards for another challenge (they'll be in tomorrow's post!) and one of them went a little bit wrong - whilst stamping the sentiment over the heat embossed border I managed to drop the ink pad onto the top space.  Oops.  So I did some covering up, I embossed some card with a lattice folder from Stampin' Up and cut a strip for the top of the card.  I then heat embossed some star images from the same Waltzing Mouse set, punched them out and placed them on top of the embossed strip using foam pads.  I then separated all the elements using peel-off lines, hopefully with the effect of making a Scandinavian sampler style card :-)  It's bright and clean, yet still festive, so I thought it was ideal for a 'manly' Christmas card!

The birthday card uses the same owl papers as the bird card from yesterday!  I made two slightly different ones, as I rather liked them, then thought that the colours are quite suitable for a bloke, even if there are lacy edges and a ribbon :-)  I'll find out soon enough, as DH did his usual thing of saying 'it's Friend X's birthday at the weekend, can I have a card?'  This is as he is five minutes from going out of the door on Thursday evening to visit Friend X!!!!  So of course I said 'have this one'........ LOL.