Birthday Cards

Handmade birthday cards make birthdays extra special for most people!

"The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.
~English Proverb"

Just had to share this card that I made for a friend's birthday. It was so quick and easy to make! I used Stampin' Up!'s (retired) Time Well Spent stamp set, some Bold Bright Stampin' Write markers to ink up the sentiment, some Encore Gold ink for the butterfly, and Whisper White, Very Vanilla and Barely Banana (retired) cardstock. Oh and there are some some crystals and gauzy ribbon on the greeting too.

To make the butterfly pop up, stamp it where you want it on your main piece first, then stamp it again on another piece of cardstock. Carefully cut out the second image (leave a little white border around it), apply some little crystals and fold up the wings a little. Then all you have to do is adhere it over the first stamped butterfly on your card. It will lie flat in your envelope and be ready to pop up again once it is free of the envelope.

You can really tie your card in with your special person's life when you hand make it.

For example, you can personalise your greetings by

• Adding the person's name and/or age
• Referring to the person's occupation
• Using the person's favourite colours
• Making the card in a person's favourite style - modern, country (a bit like the one I made shown above - I added ribbon, stamped the stitched hearts and glued a real button onto one heart), humorous, classic, masculine, feminine, etc
• Using images that mean something to the recipient
• Customising the card so that special greetings can be added by, say, the whole office, by adding pages or determining the size of the whole card
• Using a person's favourite song/poem/saying as your sentiment

Suggestion: If you would like to personalise your greeting with some UNUSUAL birthday poems for your card insert, try searching the Special Birthday Poems site for some unique and rhyming verses.

How about some examples?

1. Here I made a card for a friend who is a computer programming trouble-shooter and spends his days 'debugging' computers. I used a small ink pad to make the stripes on the background paper, cut paper circles to fit behind the corner brads and resemble washers and bolts, a beetle stamp to march across the cardfront, and a twist of ribbon to make a sort of medal:

2. This card has a simple dry-embossed background (the backing sheet was put through a Big Shot machine) and I have simply used a paper flower and a brad with a tag to complete it. I placed my friend's name in my own handwriting on the tag to personalise it.

3. This card was simple to make once I decided on colours. Just make a whole lot of paper strips and weave them together. I mounted the woven piece on a contrasting coloured mat that I trimmed around with decorative scissors, then topped that with a flower, a brad and a length of ribbon. This time I used a stamped sentiment. The person I gave this to enjoyed the bright colours and extra attention to details.

Here's a suggestion: You could make a bunch of these birthday cards to use throughout the year from all of your paper scraps.

Do You Have A Favourite Handmade Card to Share?

Do you make greeting cards? Please do share it with me.

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