Inspiration: MAN CAVE

I love the image for this weeks challenge at Hand Stamped Sentiments!



Now this is a man cave my brothers would have.... my husband not so much.  I tease that I know more about sports than he does.  I took a picture of what is in his man cave--

Yep, I can still see his face and hear him buttering me up after shooting this one.  He built the surround around our fireplace which has this nook and a ceiling spot light...little did I know years down the road he'd have a mount for the "shrine."  Now for those of you who have no idea why you'd mount a pheasant, this one has a very long tail feather.  Poor grandpa lost his life that day.  So needless to say, I used our man cave for my inspiration and came up with this--

Our girls LOVE to go out with him, carry their pretend shotguns, and "hunt."  These are a few from him and Kendall out last Thanksgiving weekend.

Here is the left side.  My challenge was to make this "manly" so I decided to do a few things differently.  I've seen more and more projects that have incorporated canvas, even noticing 12 X 12 sheets of it at local scrap stores.  I cut a couple 11 X 11 squares from a yard I picked up at the fabric shop and layered it onto Sahara Sand card stock. This stuff was called duck cloth and is much heavier.  It looked too pretty so I had to fray the edges.

I also want to add some more "manly" materials so I cut the 'hunter' out of cork with the Simple Letters dies.  I found some orange felt and used the retired Hearts and Brackets die to cut the heart and pinned it on with a metal T pin.

I had these tags--probably from 8 years ago when I started scrapping.  They were bright white so I laid them on my Crumb Cake ink pad to mess them up. ...may be a reason to keep my old linen ink pads around!  I also didn't like the white circle so I punched a new one from Soft Suede card stock.I used the threads I pulled and some hemp twine to tie off the tag.

Here is the right side of the layout--

Hard to see, but my favorite picture of them is on the bottom.  They are holding hands as they walk through the field....such a great Daddy!

And a little bit of stamping--

I used the set Autumn Days, borrowed from my friend Sara, also retiring.  I used my ink pads and blender pen to color the pheasant and stamp.  I masked it off and stamped the weeds in Crumb Cake and stamped off Suede...except for one.  Oops--wasn't going to redo.  You can also see in the lower corner, I put a couple of staples in each picture...more metal.

So there!  My man cave inspiration.  I'd love to see what you come up with using your own man cave.  Link up with us at Hand Stamped Sentiments.