Make a birthday card

Below are steps for you to make a birthday card within about 20 minutes or so. To do it up as I’ve got it in the sample photo, you will need a few specialty papers, including handmade or mulberry paper, cut to the sizes specified below, some craft wire for embellishment, and a few tools. Remember, with card making, there is no “right way” here, this is my own card design, and you can alter it any way you wish. I love color and texture, and all the fun fonts you can mess around with on the computer, not to mention all the beautiful rubber stamps out there. If you can get ahold of acid-free papers, tapes and adhesives, more power to ya! Measurements are in inches and centimeters. This card is definitely kinda girly, so, get ready, and here goes:

Card supplies list

Blank card, pale ivory or white (hey, even black would look great on this one!), measuring 6 ½” x 5” (12.5 x 16.5 cm) after folding in half

Specialty paper:

Multicolored handmade paper (greens, pinks, splotches of gold) cut to same size as card above, 6 ½” x 5” (12.5 x 16.5 cm)

Pink handmade or mulberry paper, 3 ½” x 4 ½” )(11.5 x 9 cm)

Green handmade paper or mulberry paper, 3” x 4” (10 x 7.5 cm)

Tip: What I like about using the handmade or mulberry papers, is that as you make this birthday card, you want to have the texture effects that these papers give you. It adds a nice dimension to the overall design.

Ivory cardstock, 2 ½” x 3 ½” (6.5 x 8.5 cm)

Embellishment: Craft wire, gold, medium gauge, approximately 12” to 14” (30 to 35 cm)

Scissors or paper trimmer

Pencil

Ruler

One-sided adhesive tape, (a.k.a., Scotch tape)

Brush with medium tip

Small glass of water

Double-sided adhesive tape dispenser (…and, tape of course!)

Jewelry wire cutter

Jewelry round nose pliers

Rubber stamp with Happy Birthday sentiment

Ink pad, black dye ink

Or: Print out your sentiment using your computer, and print onto the ivory card stock, using choice of font, color and size

Another design tip: When matching your specialty paper colors, say you choose oranges and hot purples instead of what I have, as you choose other colored papers to go with, hold them up to the colors you have and see what jives with your eye. In my example, the colors pink and green have a hint of blue in them, rather than the yellow undertones that you will also see in pinks and greens in other papers. So, I made sure my plain colors pink and green “jived” with the multicolor paper, also having the faint blue undertones, by hunting in my stash for pinks and greens with bluish undertones. This kind of matching takes some practice. All blues (or greens, etc.) are not created equal, make sense?

Which leads me to another point: Using a white or black blank card will go very nicely with colors like these here with the slight bluish undertones.

Instructions:

First, what to do with the multicolored mulberry paper:

With a pencil, trace around the outside of the blank, folded card onto the multicolored handmade paper.

Cut with scissors or paper trimmer.

Dip brush into water, paint the water about ¼” (.5 cm) in from the edges, following straight down the edge, making sure to saturate the paper out to the edge. If the paper is somewhat thick, may need to paint the water on both sides to get good saturation.

Gently tear the wet areas from the edges of the paper. Set aside to dry.

Tip: Don’t worry about being too perfect or what is the “right” way: the torn, uneven edges give an interesting effect.

What to do with the rest of the papers:

Cut the green handmade paper or mulberry paper to 3” x 4” (7.5 x 10 cm)

Cut the pink mulberry or handmade paper to 3 ½” x 4 ½” ) (9 x 11.5 cm)

Using your rubber stamp, or computer and printer, stamp or print the Happy Birthday sentiment onto the ivory cardstock and trim it to 2 ½” x 3 ½” (6.5 x 8.5 cm)

With the jewelry wire cutter, cut the gold craft wire to about 12” to 14” (30 to 35 cm) long.

Take your jewelry round nose pliers and create a swirl in both ends of the wire.

NOTE: You may want to make a birthday card for a guy, or a young boy. You could choose different colors and omit the swirly girly craft wire.

Tip: Doing swirls in the craft wire might take a little practice.

Okay, now you have, what, five card design elements sitting there.

What to do next --- Assemble the layers as follows before placing on the blank card: .

With the double-stick adhesive tape, align and attach the piece with the Happy Birthday sentiment onto the green paper piece.

With one-sided tape, attach the curled gold craft wire onto the back of the green paper. See if you can get the swirls to curve over the corners (see photo).

Now, put more 2-sided adhesive tape, just a little, on each corner of the back of the green paper that has the wire attached. Align, and place it on top of the pink paper piece.

Put more 2-sided adhesive tape on back of corners of pink paper.

Align and attach this to the multicolored paper with the torn edges.

Now, after placing more 2-sided adhesive on the back of the multicolored mulberry paper, you can attach all the layers together to the front of the blank, folded card.

Done! I hope it didn’t take you more than 20 to 25 minutes to make a birthday card, at least, not this one. This doesn’t account for time shopping, etc., or agonizing over paper colors. Hopefully you have something of a paper stash, but once you have it all in hand, should be simple!