It's Your Day! masculine card

Here's another masculine card. I've been trying to increase my stock of these, and my neighbor has a birthday next week. He's an older gentleman, and I thought this would be a nice card for him.

I used (again!) a cream base. The images are stamped in Chocolate Chip on cream squares that were then sponged with Really Rust. I had never tried that technique, but I really like how it turned out. The cream was just too stark with the Choc Chip, and this blended nicely. The squares were mounted as a diamond onto textured blue cs. These were then attached to three wide panels of KI Memories patterned paper, Alpine Socks. Its very nice paper with a tiny bit of shimmer in the base color. After attaching all this to the brown panel, I tied dark brown ribbon (from a party favor!) around the left side, tying in a simple knot. The images are from SU! Year Round Cheer, which is an older set that I find to be really versatile.

Again tonight, I didn't have much time to stamp, but I did play around with a few techniques. The mineral spirits also work to blend my budget Crayola colored pencils and the resulting smooth color is wonderful. I don't quite have the budget to justify Copic markers or even Prismacolor pencils, and this will be a nice fill in until I can make the splurges! There is too much to explore and not enough hours in the day to try everything. I keep a list of things I would like to try and then when I sit down to stamp, it's there to prompt me. Do you do the same, or does inspiration strike when you sit down at your stamping space?

Thanks for looking! Have a good night.