Nautical card for a man

I recently treated myself to this Marianne Design special offer kit from Cuddly Buddly, it's called Beach Set and includes A4 papers, the Nautical stamps and some lovely silky ivory ribbon and all for just £5.19 from Buddly Crafts - find it here.  Now the stamp set on it's own would cost you £8.99 so it's a bargain, and you get the papers and ribbon!  A no brainer in my book and perfect for creating something for 'difficult' men.  So this is what I came up with:

It's a smallish 5" square cream base and I've used a pale kraft card to mat my patterned paper from the pack, and to stamp the ship on to die cut out with the smaller circle die from LR0141.  I've added my signature faux embossed stitching and over-stamped the paper with some of the designs in the set using a mix of green, blue, sand and brown chalk inks.  The anchor is a MD die cut, LR0232 and I've just added string that I've also coloured with the inks.  To lighten things up I dabbed on the snow white paint dabber here and there.  The ship picture and the fish are coloured with pencils, thought they would show up better on the kraft for the ship and the cream card I used for stamping the fish.  So what do you think of my first attempt - it's a bit different to my usual flowery style, but I had fun getting inky fingers!

As Creative Inspirations, Loves Rubberstamps, and Crafty Cardmakers all want to see masculine creations, I can enter my card with each of them.