Hello friends and welcome to the big birthday celebration of The Male Room’s 6 Years!!!

It’s so exciting that this awesome challenge blog has been around for 6 years and I am so happy and proud to be a part of their design team! Not only have I made some really good friends, I have also been blessed to work with a wonderful group of talented women from all over the world!

So to celebrate this milestone we’re having a bit of a party and inviting you to join in and make us a birthday card 🙂

We’re delighted to have Funky Fossil Designs sponsoring our birthday challenge and the winner will be able to choose 3 stencils from their shop. And they have some amazing stencils!

*** Thank you Funky Fossil Designs ***

We’ve also managed to persuade Deborah to be our very special Guest Designer for our birthday challenge. You might know that Deborah is a founding member of TMR and ran the challenge for some time too. So we’re super excited to have her join us for this milestone!

Now that the proper introduction for today’s post has been made, let’s get to the card I am sharing today!

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Of course, I decided to make a masculine stenciled card for today’s post, as the stencils are the big prize!!! But instead of usual inking I played with homemade texture paste and inks!

There are plenty of YouTube videos and Pinterest posts on how to make your own texture paste. I picked just a random one that used baby powder, school glue from the dollar store and water and it turned out amazing! What I loved about it the most was the rough texture I got when the paste dried.

I prepared a piece of 110 lb black cardstock larger than A2 size and adhered the stencil (Altenew Cube Builder) to the cardstock with painters tape.

I used 3 shades of blue ink and mixed each separately with the paste – note: I mixed the ink in batches – I started with lightest, applied it to cardstock, let it dry, then once completely dry I mixed the next color and applied to the cardstock. I made sure I washed the stencil between each application.

Once all my layers were dry I used stitched nested rectangle dies (Rubbernecker Stamps) to die cut the layers. I adhered each layer separately to the card base, lifting each layer higher towards the center.

I used a negative piece of a happy birthday die cut (My Favorite Things) – I tried the letters but liked the look with the negative much better! (This design is a spin on of my masculine designs from earlier this year – you can take a look HERE – that card design was a big hit in the family so I decided to make a similar one for a friend).

To finish off the card, I die cut two little cakes and colored them with alcohol markers.

I must say I love how this card turned out! I especially love that rough texture created with the paste!

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I really hope you decide to join us for this big celebration challenge! You can link up your projects at the bottom of The Male Room Challenge blog. Hope to see you there 🙂