The Best Card For Any Guy

It was a guy friend’s birthday and I promised to make him a card but there was a problem, I didn’t know him well enough to know what he really likes to make the card. Hence, I quickly relied on my “best friend” for ideas, the “internet”.

After browsing for hours, I came across this wonderful happy birthday card which says ‘60 and still looking good’. The highlight of the card to me was not the words on the card but the origami shirt.

I found a written tutorial as well as a video tutorial from card-making-magic.com.

Written instruction: http://www.card-making-magic.com/makeapapershirt.html

Video instruction: http://www.card-making-magic.com/foldedpapershirttutorial.html

From the written instruction, you will find that 8 steps to follow. You could also find other tutorial from YouTube searching for origami shirt.

The best part of making this card is that it is versatile, easy and fast to make, you could add an element of surprise too.

Versatile

You could make this for any guy of any age or race for about any occasion.

Easy and fast

All you need is an A4 paper folded into half for the card and a rectangular coloured/ patterned paper with the size of your choice. Making the origami shirt will take about 10mins.

Element of surprise

The origami shirt can be opened. You will understand this better at the later part of this article.

However, I like to make a card that relates to the person I am giving, hence making my own life difficult. I went through my friend's Facebook photos to find a photo of him wearing a shirt that was unique and tried mimicking it. He was wearing this beige and orange stripe shirt, I used a beige paper as the base of the shirt, a orange paper for the thicker lines and a orange felt ink pen for the thinner lines. Lastly, I added white transparent little buttons to finish the shirt.

Front of the card

I used black as the base as I feel that it was the easiest contrast for orange, I added a huge orange circle and gave it a submarine eye view for a sneak peak inside.

Inside - left

There were 2 film strips with photos of him wearing the orange stripe shirt and other profile picture of him. Using Picasa, I made photos black and white, and those with him wearing the orange stripe shirt, I use the Focal black and white effect, focusing only on the shirt.

Inside - right

I used the Android font for the happy birthday wordings which you can download it for free from the internet. I attached a white hexagon shaped paper and the origami shirt on it. From the picture, you can see that the shirt can be opened up which relates to element of surprise above. Inside is where I add my personal birthday message to him.

On the celebration day, I made him come in the shirt that I mimicked, he was surprised when he saw the card but happy. It made everything worth it.