Birthday Cards

Lots of family birthdays to make cards for at this time of year. I started with this one for my Mom.

I covered a square blank with polka dot paper. Then I drew a bird and wing shape onto card to make a template and then cut them out of pink floral paper, being mindful of the pattern in the eye area. After sticking them down I drew in a branch and legs with felt tip pen.

To make the flowers I folded small squares of tissue paper 4 times to make a wedge shape and then cut a rounded end. When you unfold it has this pretty scalloped edge.

After sticking them on I added some crystals and a flower sequin for the eye with sticky dots.

This one was for my mother-in-law. I chose a butterfly print background with a matching tag. I mounted the tag onto card and attached it with foam spacers.

I made 2 pink tissue paper flowers as above and added green crystals with sticky dots as before.

Finally I used pink Crystals Tulip paint to decorate the edge of the butterfly wings, going over the dots already on the design.

All these papers come with Crafts Beautiful magazine quite regularly and I never buy any.

Next the tricky matter of what to make for my daughter's 17th birthday. I was attracted to these papers by the colours and I thought she would like them. The background of the card is made by layering up torn strips of paper - make sure you rip towards you if you want the white core of the paper to be exposed. I needed that to give some separation between all these colours. The dark blue strip is from an old paper bag that I kept.

Next I marked the numbers out on card. Luckily 1 and 7 are easily done with a ruler to make them neat.  I positioned them on the patterned paper and cut them out. Before attaching them with sticky pads I marked their position lightly with a pencil so that they would be level.

Finally I got all my sewing threads out and chose suitable colours to make a matching tassel. The instructions for doing this are here. You need to make a small U-frame for this size of tassel, which does make it fiddly to bind and tie off with navy thread. I attached the tassel head with a sticky dot and taped the ends on the back of the card. My daughter especially like the tassel so it was worth the effort!

Finally my valentine's card. I was going to buy one but they were all so awful I was compelled to make it. I got up at 6am the day before to do it!

Firstly I scanned in a copy of the original sheet music for 'Smoke get in Your Eyes' and printed it out. I've got loads of old sheet music passed down through the family from the days when singing round the piano was good family entertainment. I cut a square out a bit larger than the size of the card blank, folded it in half and drew half a heart on the back. Then I ripped out the heart shape. I crumpled up the remaining frame to give it some texture, then moved onto the background.

I chose 3 co-ordinating papers and ripped them out. I crumpled up the one with cogs on but left the others flat for contrast. I messed around with their placement until I was happy with it, trying the heart frame over the top to check. I stuck the background papers down and left to dry whilst making the tag. This was also pre-printed in one of my books of papers so I cut it out, made the hole and scuffed up the edge with a black felt tip. I cut a 'ribbon' out of the stripy card and checked it's final position.

Before sticking it all down I glued the end of the ribbon in the top right corner, then added the heart frame, then finally the other end of the ribbon on top. When it was dry, I trimmed off the excess music paper and used black rub-on wax to age the edges of the heart frame and some of the creases. I had a bit of the sheet music left over so I ripped a further smaller heart shape out of the title part of the music stuck that inside the card, so that it was obvious which song the music belonged to. My husband like it.