Masculine Birthday Cards Inspired by Watercolor for Card Makers

I'm starting to actually put together cards from the myriad of playing I've done based upon the lessons from the onlinecardclasses.com class Watercolor for Card Makers.  So far, I'm really liking the background techniques and I love that I found something that will work for masculine cards.  I struggle with those the most.  For today's cards, I broke out a set from Impression Obsession called It's About Time.  I bought it a while back at Runaway Arts and Crafts (too close of a walk from work for my budget's liking, but budget smudget).  I haven't really had the time to play with it (ha!).  But when I ran out of background stamps to play with, I thought about making my own.  So stuck all the big stamps to my Fiskars press and made my own background.  For version one, I just stamped it with Versafine ink but I then heat embossed the second version.  I broke out my cheap watercolors from Michaels and went to town!   Once the background were dry, I cut them down to size and made a couple of banners.  I didn't want the cards to look exactly the same, so I matted one on black paper and then played with that angle look that is so popular right now (by played with I mean I put the paper on the angle and fought my natural instinct to straighten it).  Then it was just some taping it down.  But I still needed a sentiment.  I went with the traditional banner for one but on the angle card, I decided to balance out some of that white space that looked weird to be since it was such an angle.  I added a few sequins to the more traditional card (there can be sequins on a masculine card, right?  Of course!) but the angle card had finally grown on me so I left it alone and called it good.