Part of our Card Ideas and Sentiments guides.
Finished masculine cards from Unity customers. There is a card sample under every group of sayings below, so keep scrolling.
Cards for men are the ones crafters tell us they struggle with most, and the complaint has two halves. The front, where your stash is all florals and pastels and none of it suits your brother. And the inside, where every sentiment stamp you own is in a curly font. This guide fixes both. Below are the images, the colors, the sets and the words, sorted by who the card is for and what he is into. Every sentiment quoted on this page is printed on a red rubber stamp we make here in Minnesota, word for word as it stamps.
A word on why we wrote it. Our For The Guys collection opens by saying these are the cards crafters struggle with most, and that line is there because customers tell us so, year after year. Searching for help turns up galleries of finished cards and not one page that tells you a single word to write inside. That is the half nobody has attempted, and it is most of what follows.
Why cards for men are the hardest ones to make
Ask a room full of cardmakers which card defeats them and you will get the same answer. Not sympathy. Not weddings. Cards for men.
There are three problems, and most people are only stuck on one. Once you can name which one is yours, the fix takes about ten minutes.
- The image problem. Your stash is florals, script, butterflies, teacups, pastel backgrounds. None of it is wrong. It is all aimed at the same recipient. You are not short on skill, you are short on one bold image.
- The color problem. Most of what reads as feminine in a handmade card is not the image at all. It is the palette and the trim. Change those two things and the same image reads completely differently.
- The words problem. You found an image you like. Then you open the drawer and every sentiment says "thinking of you" in a curly font. None of that is going inside a card for a sixty year old man who rebuilds transmissions in his garage, so the card sits half finished on the desk.
If your problem is the image or the color, the next two sections fix it. If your problem is the words, skip ahead. Most of this guide is about the words.
What actually makes a card read masculine
There is a piece of advice that goes around about this: strip the card down. One image, one ink, no layers, no paper. It is a useful fallback and we will come back to it, but it is not the rule, and taken as gospel it produces a flat card that looks like you gave up halfway.
Men notice construction. The ones who build things for a living are often the first to turn a card over and look at how it was put together. A layered card is not a feminine card. Three panels, a stitched edge, a torn border and an embossed background is a lot of work and it reads as a lot of work, which is the whole reason you are making this by hand instead of buying it.
What shifts the read is not how much you put on the card. It is what the pieces are made of. Keep the craft, swap the vocabulary.
- Texture instead of trim. Barn board, brick, wood grain, topographic lines, tire tread, torn kraft, a stitched edge, dry embossing. Stack three layers of that and it reads as built rather than decorated.
- Hard edges instead of soft ones. Square corners, straight bands, a clean rectangular frame. Scallops, doilies and lace are what actually move a card feminine, far more than the number of layers under them.
- Flat embellishment, not fluffy. Twine tied flat, a metal brad, a strip of leather-look paper, a raised embossed sentiment. Skip the bow, the pearls, the flower cluster.
- Two colors from one family. This is the biggest lever of all and it gets its own section below.
And the stripped-down card does have its place: when nothing is working, when you have eleven more to make, or when the image is strong enough to carry the whole front on its own. One bold background stamped across the panel, one small sentiment low and to the right, done in two minutes. Use it as a reliable fallback, not as a rule about what men like.
Barn Wall
A single weathered board background, 4.25" x 5.5", which covers the full front of an A2 card in one press. It works stripped down with nothing but a sentiment, and it works just as well as the bottom layer of a stack, because weathered wood is texture rather than pattern and almost anything sits on it.
All that Grunge
Seven stamps of pure texture: gears at about 1.5" x 2", an arrow, a tire tread strip 1" x 4.25", a row of numbers zero through nine, and ink splatters. This is the set that lets you layer without softening anything. Splatters under a panel, gears peeking out from behind it, numbers along one edge.
Vroom
A full panel background at 4.25" x 5.5" built from vehicles, busy enough to be the whole card front. Stamp it, mat it on black, add one word. One press of real detail beats four layers of nothing.
For a harder, more urban ground, Hit the Brick is a brick wall at the same full panel size, and brick under a wrench or a motorcycle reads as a garage without you having to draw one.
Why the method works at all: our stamps are red rubber on black cling foam, so they sit on a clear acrylic block and come off again in a second. You press, you peel the rubber off the block, you press the next one. Building up three or four impressions costs you nothing but ink.
Who this is for: the person whose cards keep coming out looking soft, who has been told the answer is to use less, and who suspects the real answer is to use different.
The colors that read masculine
This is the section that does the most work for the least money, and almost nobody talks about it. You can make a card read masculine without buying a single new stamp, just by changing what you stamp it on and what you stamp it in.
Start with the card base, not the ink
The biggest single lever is the paper. A floral image on kraft reads more masculine than a motorcycle on bright white. Kraft is already a mid-tone brown, so it does half the work of your background before you have inked anything.
Kraft Cardstock, 8.5" x 11"
A pack of 25, and the single cheapest change you can make to a masculine card. If you want it precut to card size instead, we cut it both ways: Tall Cut and Short Cut. Finish the job with kraft envelopes, so the envelope does not undo the card before he opens it.
One black that behaves
Blackout Hybrid Detail Ink
If you own one ink for this kind of card, own a black that gives a crisp impression and does not bleed into the fibers of kraft. Waterproof, archival, fast drying, and it holds fine detail, which matters because most of the images in this guide are line work rather than solid shapes. It will not smear if you color over it with markers or pencils.
The color families that actually read masculine
Masculine is not the absence of color. It is a particular range of color, and the range is wider than most people think. What these have in common is low chroma and a warm or neutral undertone, nothing with pink or lavender hiding in it.
- Charcoal and true black. The safest card on the page. Charcoal is often better than black, because it looks deliberate rather than default.
- Browns, the whole range. Walnut, saddle, coffee, chestnut, a weak sepia. Brown on kraft is the quietest and most reliable combination in this guide.
- Forest and olive. Deep green reads outdoors without reading seasonal. Olive is the color that makes a tree or a mountain look like landscape rather than like Christmas.
- Slate, navy and denim. Blue works for men as long as it is dark and slightly grey. Navy is formal, denim is casual, and a bright clear blue is neither.
- Rust, brick and oxblood. The one most people miss. A deep red with brown in it is warm and unexpected, and it is the right color for a card that needs some feeling in it.
- Stone, putty and sand. Not for the image. For the background texture under the image, where you want something there but not much.
The rule of two, and tone on tone
Two colors. One dark for the focal image, one mid tone from the same family for the background or texture. Never three. Three is where a card starts looking like a scrapbook page.
The move that makes a two press card look designed: stamp the background in a lighter version of the same color as the focal image. Brown background, darker brown image. Slate background, navy image. Your eye reads that as depth rather than as two separate decisions, and it is the best possible use of a full panel background like Barn Wall or Vroom.
What to leave off
Pastels, and anything with a pink or lilac undertone, which includes a lot of "neutral" greys that are cooler than they look. High chroma brights, unless you are using exactly one small pop of it on purpose. Shimmer across a whole panel. Script fonts in a light color. Bows, lace, and pearls.
Two embellishments that do not undo a masculine card:
Unity Embossing Powder, Alabaster White
Heat set over a sentiment on a kraft base, white embossing is crisp, raised and completely plain, which is exactly the point. It is the one decorative finish that makes a masculine card look more deliberate rather than softer.
Burlap Twine
Tied once and flat, not bowed. Rough fiber is texture rather than decoration, and it is the only string we would put on a card for a man.
Muted Moss Mica Pigment Powder
On metallics: copper and gunmetal sit in this range, gold and rose gold do not. Of our six pigment powders this is the one that lands in the masculine range. It does shimmer, so brush it on as a wash under the image rather than over the top of it.
Who this is for: the person who has the right stamp and the card still looks wrong.
Trees, mountains and open country
Landscape is the most underrated masculine image there is, and it solves the hardest version of this problem: the man with no hobby you can name. Everybody has somewhere they would rather be. A tree line, a ridge, a field and a barn all say that without having to be about anything.
It is also the one category where the card carries real feeling without a word of explanation, which makes it the right front for a sincere message.
Blessed Adventures
Seven stamps and the best landscape set we make: a single tree at 1.5" x 3", a grove at 1.75" x 2.25", mountains at 2" x 4.25", a fox, a buck at 2.75" x 3.25", a doe, and the sentiment blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures. Stamp the mountains across the middle of a kraft card in slate, the tree line in front of them in a darker slate, and you have built a scene in two presses and one color family.
Woodland Layers
Built to be stamped three times. A solid tree line silhouette at 1.5" x 5.5", plus a right facing row and a left facing row each at 1.5" x 2.5", plus a pair of birds. Press the full tree line lightest and highest, then the orientation rows darker and lower, overlapping. Three presses of one green at three ink strengths and the card has distance in it.
Mountain Scapes stencil
An 8.5" x 11" stencil with four different mountain shapes you can layer. Blend ink through it in slate or olive first, then stamp the trees on top. It is the cheapest way to put a ridge behind anything on this page.
A Walk in the Woods
A single woods scene background at 4.25" x 5.5". One press, in brown or forest green, covers the entire card front and needs nothing else but a sentiment.
Wood Pile
Wood paneling at the same full panel size. The texture version of the same idea, and the right ground for a card about a man who heats with wood.
The woods, with a joke in it
Legend of the Pines
A sasquatch at 4" x 4.5", large and detailed enough to carry a card by itself, with two sentiments: You're the kind of man they write legends about and Be your own legend. The first one is doing something clever. It arrives as a joke, because there is a sasquatch above it, and it means every word. That makes it the most useful sentiment on this page for a man who will not accept a compliment, because the picture gives him somewhere to look.
Farm, field and the fence line
Out here in Minnesota this is not a hobby category, it is most of the men we know.
Country Guy
Three stamps, and two sentiments that sound like they were overheard rather than written: Howdy handsome and Damn straight. you're one of the good ones. That second line is the way a man actually compliments another man, and seeing it printed is why this set sells.
Howdy
Six stamps: a set of cowboy boots between 1.25" x 1.75" and 1.25" x 2", and the word Howdy at 1.25" x 1.75". Boots stamped three times in a row with Howdy underneath is a finished card in four presses.
What the Buck
One large deer image at 3" x 3.5" and no sentiment, so bring the words from elsewhere on this page. You're the kind of man they write legends about under a buck is a very good card.
For the barn behind all of it, Barn Wall from the section above.
Who this is for: the man with no hobby you can name, the man who hunts, the man who farms, and the man who is outside right now in weather you would not go out in.
Cards for Dad
Dad is the easiest card in this guide to make and the hardest one to write, because you are not sending a greeting, you are trying to say something you have probably never said out loud.
First Love, First Hero
A dad with a daughter on his shoulders, 1.75" x 4.5", tall and narrow, which suits a card you want to feel like a portrait rather than a scene. Two sentiments: I love you Happy Father's Day and My first love my first hero Always and forever my Dad. That second line is long, and long is right here. It is the one sentiment in the catalog that says the whole thing for you.
Favorite Dad
A word kit, thirteen stamps. FATHER, DAD, Happy Father's Day, Super, My Hero, Bonus, Best Ever, My Favorite and The Man. The Myth. The Legend, plus a mustache. The small words stack above the big ones, so My Favorite over DAD is a finished card front and you have written nothing yet.
Bonus Dad
For the stepdad, the bonus dad, the man who raised you and did not have to. Five stamps with a deer background at 1.75" x 2.5", and four sentiments: When you didn't have my hand, you had my back, I'm lucky to have you as my bonus dad, admired. appreciated & loved, and You are someone to look up to no matter how tall I've grown. Read the first one again. It is the single best sentiment we print, and it exists because somebody needed to say it to a man who showed up without being obligated to.
Best Fishes
Same territory, different angle: Thank you for being the father you didn't have to be, Any man can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad, A dad is a daughter's first love, and the short one, best fishes.
Who this is for: the card you have been meaning to make since June.
Cards for Grandpa
Grandpa cards are usually made by a grandchild who is now an adult, which changes what the card should say. The jokes about age that work for a fifty year old land differently on a man of eighty.
The Very Best Guy
Thirteen stamps, and the best value on this page. One sentiment, Thanks for being the very best, plus twelve relationship words that stamp underneath it: Father, Son, Bonus kid, Guy, Brother, son-in-law, uncle, Grandpa, Stepson, Dude, Bonus dad, Stepdad. Thanks for being the very best over Grandpa is a complete card front, sincere without being sentimental, and a sentence a man will read twice.
Still Turning Heads
A classic car at 2.5" x 3.75" and three sentiments: Still turning heads after all these years, Older, Bolder, and undeniably classic, and the quietest of the three, The best things come with time. Use the last one when you do not want to make a joke about his age at all.
Slowly Turning Classic
A vintage pickup front at 2.75" x 3.25" with You're slowly turning from old to classic. A truck he would recognize, and a joke mild enough to send to anyone.
Good Ol' Days
A car at 2.75" x 5" and three sentiments: You're my person, Missin' the good ol' days, and Wishing you happiness today & always. Honest note: the middle one reads as nostalgia from inside the friendship, which is right for a grandfather you were close to and wrong for a card you are sending out of duty. Pick it only if you mean it.
Who this is for: the grandchild who wants the card to say thank you without using the word.
Cards for a brother or a brother-in-law
The brother card has a tone problem. Too sincere and he will be uncomfortable. Too snarky and you have wasted the one card a year you send him. The answer is almost always a joke on the front and one true sentence inside.
Cheers Bruh
Eleven stamps, a trio of beer cans and ten sentiments, which makes it the deepest sentiment set in the For The Guys catalog: Cheers bruh, Hoppy Beer-thday, Another beer older, Crushed it, For my guy, You've earned a cold one, Thanks for the help, You are the best, Relax & chill and Enjoy retirement. The combination that does the most work: Another beer older on the front, You are the best inside. You have made the joke and said the thing, and he can pretend he only read the front.
Keepin It Classy
A car front at 1.75" x 3.75" and four usable sentiments: To that guy who always keeps it classy, Happy Birthday, vintage style, Old is the new cool and They don't make 'em like you anymore. The last one is a compliment disguised as a joke, which is the exact register a brother card wants.
For a brother-in-law, where you want warm but not familiar, The Very Best Guy stamps Thanks for being the very best over Brother, and carries son-in-law if the relationship runs that direction.
For the roast version, our Snarky Birthday Wishes guide has 44 lines and several are written for exactly this card.
Who this is for: the sibling who would be suspicious of a sincere card and would keep it anyway.
Cards for a husband or a partner
Short on purpose. If you want a long romantic message, write it yourself on a plain card, because nothing stamped will be as good as your own sentence. What a stamp is good for here is the front.
P.S. I Love You Guy
Two stamps: a standing figure at 2.25" x 3.75" and P.S. I Love You at 1" x 2.25". Stamp the figure centered, the sentiment below it, leave the inside blank and write. The front has done its job, which is to make it clear before he opens it that this is not a card from the drugstore.
If you want something lighter, All Cylinders carries hello handsome, which on a card left on the kitchen counter on an ordinary Tuesday does more than a birthday card does.
Who this is for: the anniversary, the ordinary Tuesday, the apology.
Cards for an old friend
Men who have been friends for forty years tend to communicate by insult, which makes this a card you can have real fun with, as long as there is one honest line in it somewhere.
Ol' Friend
An old man with his dog at 2.5" x 3.75", and the dog is the detail that makes it his. Three sentiments: Happy birthday, old friend, Nobody loves life like an old man, and the long one, Not to brag or anything but I can forget what I'm doing while I'm doing it. Use the long one on the inside, not the front. It is a joke that needs the pause of opening the card.
Good Ol' Days splits the difference: Missin' the good ol' days for the friend you do not see anymore, You're my person for the friend you still do.
Who this is for: the friend from high school, the army buddy, the guy you have been fishing with since before either of you had children.
Cards for a coworker, a boss, or the neighbor who plowed your driveway
This is the card you need at short notice for a man you like but do not know well, and it has to be warm without being personal. One set covers the whole category.
For the Guys
Nine stamps. Three images, a bike at 1.25" x 2.5", an airplane and a car each about 1" x 2.75". Six sentiments: Happy Birthday, Thank You, Congratulations, you're just plane awesome, you are now a classic and life's a journey enjoy the ride. Three plain occasion sentiments and three with humor in them, in one set. If you buy one set off this page, buy this one. The pun is meant to be stamped under the airplane, and that pairing is the whole card.
For a thank you with more weight behind it, Cheers Bruh carries Thanks for the help and You've earned a cold one, which is the right card for the man who spent two hours with his tractor clearing your driveway and will not take money for it. The Very Best Guy carries Guy and Dude, which is how you send a sincere card to somebody whose exact relationship to you has no name.
Who this is for: Monday morning, when you find out it is somebody's last day on Friday.
Fishing cards
Fishing is the deepest hobby in this catalog and the easiest card on this page to make, because the puns write themselves and a man who fishes will forgive a pun.
Reel Great Guy
A fishing lure background at 2.5" x 2.75" and five sentiments: To a reel great guy, Have a reel-y great day, Best fishes, Catch ya later and O-Fish-Ally retired. Birthday, thank you, retirement and a goodbye off one set, all aimed at the same man. The retirement line alone is worth it, because it is the card every fishing man's coworkers want to send and nobody can find.
Hook, Line & Sunshine
The sincere version. A dad fishing on a dock at 2.75" x 3.25", which is a scene rather than an object, and that changes the card completely. Sentiments: DAD, Happy Father's Day, it's a good day to have a good day and keep living the good life. The last one is the line for a retirement card for a man about to spend every Tuesday on the water.
If you want the front to be nothing but the picture, Somethin' is Fishy is one large image stamp at 2.75" x 4" with no sentiment on it at all.
Who this is for: his birthday, his retirement, and the thank you after he took your kid out on the boat.
Cars, motorcycles and anything with an engine
Vehicles are the most reliable masculine image there is, and the reason is that the card is not really about the car. A man who restored a 1968 pickup is a man who is patient, and a card with that truck on it says you noticed.
All Cylinders
A car at 2" x 4.5" and three sentiments: hello handsome, Thanks for helping me along the road less traveled and A year older and still firing on all cylinders. The middle one is the surprise. It is not a car joke, it is a thank you to a man who helped you through something, and it happens to sit under a picture of a car. That is the best kind of sentiment: a real sentence with a plausible excuse for being there.
Keepin It Classy brings the muscle car and To that guy who always keeps it classy. Still Turning Heads is the line for the man whose car and whose wife have both been with him thirty years. Slowly Turning Classic has the vintage pickup. For a full panel, Vroom.
Who this is for: the man in the garage, the man who talks about the carburetor, the man who drove you to practice.
Tools, workshops and the man who builds things
The man who fixes things is the easiest man to shop for and the hardest man to write to, because what you want to say is thank you for every time I called and you came over, and that is a long sentence to fit on a card.
Best Tool In The Box
Eight stamps. Five tool images small enough to use as a repeating pattern: a wrench at .5" x 1.75", a screwdriver at .25" x 1.75", a drill at 1.25" x 1.25", a hammer at 1" x 2.25" and a saw at .75" x 2.5". Three sentiments: Dad...., Happy Dad's Day and You're the Best Tool in the Box. The method that makes it worth owning: stamp all five tools in a loose row across the bottom of a kraft card, in one ink, slightly tilted. A pattern of tools is a card front. One acrylic block, five presses.
For the ground underneath, a wrench stamped in black over Barn Wall is a workshop in two presses, and All that Grunge has the gears and the tire tread.
For the words, borrow from elsewhere on this page. Cheers Bruh carries Thanks for the help, and All Cylinders carries Thanks for helping me along the road less traveled. Either one, inside a card with a hammer on the front, says the long sentence for you.
Who this is for: the father, the father-in-law, the neighbor with the good ladder.
Common questions
Why are masculine cards so hard to make?
Three reasons, and most people are only stuck on one. The image, because a craft stash is usually florals and pastels aimed at one kind of recipient. The color, because three patterned papers and a script font read feminine no matter what image sits on top. And the words, because almost every sentiment stamp on the market is written in a voice you would not use with your brother. Fix whichever one is actually stopping you and the card takes ten minutes.
What colors should I use for a masculine card?
Low chroma, warm or neutral undertone, nothing with pink or lavender hiding in it. Charcoal, the whole brown range, forest and olive, slate and navy and denim, rust and brick and oxblood, and stone or putty for background texture. Use two of them, one dark for the image and one mid tone from the same family behind it, and never three. Start with kraft cardstock instead of white and you are halfway there before you ink anything.
What do you write in a birthday card for a man?
A joke on the front and one true sentence inside. That structure gives him permission to only acknowledge the joke. Printed lines that do this well: Another beer older with You are the best inside, They don't make 'em like you anymore, You're slowly turning from old to classic, and for a card with no joke in it at all, The best things come with time.
What do you write in a card for a stepdad or a bonus dad?
Name the fact that he chose to. That is the whole message, and the sentiments we print for it say it plainly: When you didn't have my hand, you had my back, Thank you for being the father you didn't have to be, and Any man can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad.
What stamps work for a man who has no hobbies?
Landscape and texture. Everybody has somewhere they would rather be, so a tree line, a ridge, a barn wall or a brick wall says something true without having to be about a hobby. A mountain range stamped in slate with a tree line in front of it is specific enough to feel chosen and general enough to send to anyone.
How do I make a handmade card look less feminine?
Take things off it. One bold image, one ink color, a plain card base, and nothing else. No layers, no patterned paper, no ribbon, no bow. If it looks unfinished to you, that is usually the point where it starts looking right to him. Add one small sentiment low and to the right and stop.
What is the best rubber stamp set for cards for men?
If you own none, start with two. For the Guys gives you a bike, a plane, a car and six occasion sentiments in one $28 set. The Very Best Guy gives you one sincere sentiment and twelve relationship words to stamp under it, which covers a father, a son, a brother, a grandpa, an uncle, a stepdad and six more. Between them you can make a card for nearly any man on your list.
Related guides
For the funny version of a birthday card, see snarky birthday wishes. For a man who is going through something hard, what to write in an encouragement card. For a retirement card, retirement card sentiments. The full set of guides is on our Card Ideas and Sentiments page, and the stamps themselves are in For The Guys.
Nic Magnuson runs manufacturing at Unity Stamp Company, a family-owned stamp maker in New London, Minnesota, where every stamp is made in-house in red rubber. This page is updated every year.