Welcome to my crafty blog. Something a bit different today – my son’s friend asked me to make a 60th birthday card for his father, who is a big fan of scooters and the Mod subculture. I’ve gone for a fairly iconic feel for this card, and hopefully captured the style.

I started by making the roundel as the background – that was a key logo for Mods. I used Claritystamp’s nested circle dies to build this as I wanted it to sit flat, starting with a square of white card and cutting a large circle in the centre. I then trimmed a slightly smaller square of blue card, and cut a circle into that using a die two sizes smaller than for the white one. Next was to use that die plus another two sizes smaller to cut a ring of white card, and then finally down another two sizes for a small red circle. I attached the blue card behind the white square and glued them to a 6×6 card blank. The white ring then sat inside the blue circle, with the red piece in the centre.

I’ve had this scooter stamp for years – I knew it would come in handy at some point! I stamped it in black and heat embossed the outline with clear powder. I then fussy cut it out and coloured it with ‘tumbled glass’, ‘pumice stone’ and ‘black soot’ Distress inks and a waterbrush, before attaching it to the card front with foam pads.

I finished by die cutting ’60’ in black using Julie Hickey’s number dies. They didn’t look quite right with parts of the roundel showing through their centres, so I cut them again in white and paper pieced the centres into the numbers.

I really hope he likes it. I was never into mod culture (a bit young!), although I do remember seeing groups of young men on scooters heading off to the seaside on bank holidays (much to my father’s disapproval) The nearest I ever got was going to see Quadrophenia at the cinema!

I’m sharing this card over at a couple of blog challenges. Just Add Ink‘s sketch inspired the layout, and As You See It have got a masculine theme, which this definitely fits.