Beekeeper's birthday

My BIL's birthday is coming up. He took up beekeeping a few years ago, so I decided to make a bee themed card for him. I came across these cool postage stamps featuring a bee on a flower and decided to use them as an interesting art element.  To create the card, I stenciled hexagons for a honeycomb background, mounted that on  gray card stock cut with a stitched die, and attached that to a black card. The sentiment is black embossed next to the postage stamps, then mounted on a black piece of cardstock. It's pretty simple, but it meets my idea of a masculine birthday card.

This card is entered in these challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday -- anything goes

Word Art Wednesday #619 -- anything goes

Stencil fun -- use stencils

Double Trouble #150 -- (no patterned paper, flower,, garden insect; plus entered at partner site)

Crafter's Cafe #302 -- flowers

Pammie's Inky Pinkies #2342 -- anything goes

Pink Christmas

 I love it when a couple of challenge themes work together to suggest a card. ABC Christmas and the Jingle Belles did that for me. ABC Christmas has the theme "U for Use it Up" and I went digging through my file of stickers and embellishments (some which have moved house with me three times). The Jingle Belles wanted pink Christmas, which led me to these sparkly pink and green stickers. All I had to do was arrange them on pink cardstock, matt that on green cardstock, add some sequins, and draw in a slim border. Presto-change-o, it's a retro pink Christmas card.

This card is entered n these challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday -- Christmas

ABC Christmas -- U for Use it Up (stickers)

Jingle Belles -- pink Christmas

CRAFT #694 -- nontraditional Christmas colors

Word Art Wednesday #617 -- anything goes

Pammie's Inky Pinkies #2340 -- anything goes