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Handmade Birthday Cards

As in most countries of the world, birthdays are important social events in Switzerland. Usually, there is a big or small get-together where the birthday boy or girl (or man or woman) is celebrated and receives gifts. Depending on the creativity of your friends and family birthday gifts can range from awesome and useful to strange but nice to definitely-heading-straight-to-the-trash-can. But what would birthday gifts be without a birthday card?


A friend has a birthday coming up and I already have a great gift ready. The only thing missing is a matching birthday card. I browsed through the cards they sell at the major retail stores like Migros, Coop and Manor. Nothing exciting to be found there. True, there are some nice cards and some are even classy but they all lacked a personal note. Preprinted birthday wishes are not exactly what I had in mind.

Thus, I decided to dust off my crafting skills and make a nice birthday card myself. Armed with paper, scissors, pencils, glue and a bunch of single-colored and simple greeting cards I plunged into the quest. A theme was quickly found, and soon dancers were twirling around on notepads and being cut out of paper.

This is what you'll need to make your own unique handmade birthday cards:

  • All kinds of papers (different colors, wrapping paper, tissue paper, thin cardboard, etc.)
  • A pair of good scissors and a cutter (snap blade knife)
  • Glue
  • Single-colored greetings cards (available at most super markets)
  • A good portion of creativity! :)

And this is how it's done:

  1. Find a theme (e.g. dance, animal, city, music, etc.)
  2. Sketch a scene that matches your theme (e.g. two dancers, a dog, skyscrapers, musical notes, etc.). Use simple shapes that will be easy to cut out!
  3. Draw the scene onto thick paper (make sure it's not the same color as the greeting card)
  4. Cut out the scene and glue it to the front of the greeting card
  5. Add scraps of different paper (e.g. a different color or shape or so) and glue them to the card as well
  6. Write a nice note to your friend / family member and stick the card into the envelope! Done!
Here are some of the cards I made; copying is allowed!







© 2012 IRENE WYRSCH "A HUMOROUS GUIDE TO SWITZERLAND" ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Comments

  1. Wow, an excellent idea for making gift cards with stickers like this. Making Christmas cards like this will look the cutest. Such an amazing article indeed.

    ReplyDelete

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