Happy Birthday x 2

Okay, so the deal with these cards is that I wanted to make a card I had seen on Kristina Werner's blog. It's a fairly basic card, but while the look is fairly gender neutral, it's not too cute for an older boy which is where I tend to run into trouble now that my son is in "Tweendom." And for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of visiting this mythical land, it's ruled by an evil King called, Puberty and his moody minions! LOL!! So anyway, the paper is all from the Life of the Party line by Basic Grey. I bought the 6 x 6 paper pack because I knew I really only wanted the paper to make cards. The "happy birthday" stamp is from the $1 bin at Michaels and I used Versamark and heat embossed it with white embossing powder. The candles are just thin strips of paper cut from the sheet that i then added dimensionals to pop them up. The flames are just cut free hand on some scrap paper. Now onto card #2. As you can see the card uses all of the same papers and elements but with a few tweeks to make it just a little bit different. I used a different "Happy Birthday" sentiment. This one is from My Pink Stamper's Friends and Family set. I just stamped it several times down the one side. Then I used chipboard stickers for the "2" and the "U". The white "2" is a Thicker from American Crafts and the "U" is from the Lemonade set at Basic Grey. Then I just used my white gel pen to hand draw a frame around the card. That's my take on some more masculine birthday cards. Do you have trouble making cards that aren't too cute?