Hey there, it's Kathleen here and I'm excited to share my first projects here on the Pinkfresh Studio blog! :)

And although I am a member of the scrapbooking DT and normally leave the cardmaking to the much more talented ladies, I thought that for today I would show you both: a layout made with the "Escape the Ordinary" collection and three masculine (but clean) cards with the "Boy's Fort" collection. So, let's get started!

For my layout I chose those two photos of a very special house guest I had for a few weeks last year ;) For the border on the left side I tore two wide paper strips from the papers "Chase" and "Transform" and adhered them with some double sided tape to my white cardstock base.

For my photo cluster I used some papers from the 6x6" paper pad and layered them behind the photos to create more dimension. I also used some of the phrase stickers and a few pieces from the ephemera pack to layer in between (like the leaves on the left) and that "life is better when you're laughing" piece was perfect as a title for this page!

The cute little arrows are from the die cut fabric pieces package and the stars are a mix of chipboard stickers, ephemera pieces and studio puff stickers - I love that they are included in so many packages because that way you can have a variety of texture on your project without using too many different shapes!

I also repeated the star shape by stamping the star banner stamp from the "Escape the Ordinary" stamp set in a light gray below and above my photo/paper cluster.

And finally, my journaling.You might know that I'm a big fan of using hidden journaling in my projects and those layered tags from the collection are just perfect for it! So to be able to tuck one of those cuties in on the left, I made sure to adhere the green paper strip only on the far left side. For some added detail I strung some black and white baker's twine from my stash onto my tag.

Alright - I hope you liked this first project with the beautiful "Escape the Ordinary" collection! (Seriously, the more I work with it, the more I love it because I keep coming up with new colour schemes to use with it <3 )

So, now for my second project for this blog post. When I was working with the very cool and masculine "Boy's Fort" collection, I couldn't help but make a few cards and corresponding envelopes.

For the cards I always used the same "recipe": I chose a card base in one of the colours from the collection, trimmed a piece of white cardstock slightly smaller than the base and embossed it with an embossing folder. I then adhered some ephemera pieces and sometimes some stickers and with some glitter glue (in gold, silver and white) I added some sparkly but cool details to also highlight the embossed surface of the white cardstock.

So - that's it from me for today. I hope you enjoyed these two very different projects and maybe are inspired to make some masculine cards yourself! :)