I'm home on a sick day with my son, so I have some time to make cards!! (I'm not neglecting him, he's feeling mostly better now and playing happily!)
I took two challenges - color challenge and a layout and made 2 different cards with some of the same elements. The color challenge is from Splitcoast from last week - more mustard, old olive and midnight must (I also used very vanilla).
The layout is from
Retrosketches. I made one vertical and one horizontal.

I made this one to be a male birthday card. I used chevron embossing and a glimmer brad. See how I cut the framelit shape (green) to be only behind the top half.

For this one I embossed with pewter the music notes in the background. The flower is 3 layers cut out and popped up on each other. I embossed on the flag strips and also used my new Simply Scored plate for some scoring patterns on the bottom of the card. Added two buttons to finish it off.