How to Make Simple Handmade Birthday Cards

If you've ever received a handmade birthday card, be it a sticky glittery mess from your kids or an elegant, beautifully made card from a friend, you'll know that receiving a handmade birthday card means far more than getting a mass produced shop bought one.

The beauty of handmade cards is that they can be made specifically with a particular person in mind, so whether you want to tie in hobbies or colours schemes, be rude about their age, or want to share an in joke, it can all be done with a handmade card.

Another advantage is that they can be incredibly cost effective to make, so if you've got a large family, lots of friends and need birthday cards every other week it can be a way of saving a few pennies, and having a lot of fun at the same time.

This is also a great hobby as you don't need any special equipment (a good pair of scissors is about as far as it goes in the early days) and you get to see immediate results.

 Before you start there are a few items that you need, but they are very widely available.

They are:

• Card blanks ~ widely available online and from good craft stores
• Craft scissors ~ you need scissors that can cope with different types of materials such as card and ribbon
• Glue, glue dots, double sided sticky tape ~ it's almost impossible to make handmade cards without sticking something together so it's worth trying out a few of these products to find the one that suits you best for the type of cards you want to make.
• Embellishments ~ this is the catch all term for the things that get stuck onto handmade cards. They are widely available to buy or you can have a go at making your own. There are no rules with these you can use anything from dried flowers from your garden to pictures cut out of magazines.
• A healthy dose of creativity ~ probably the most important item this ~ you need bucketloads of imagination and creativity to turn the raw materials into works of art.

 The first thing to do when making a handmade card is think about the design and what you want it to say.

Are you looking for something serious or amusing, abstract or actual, what colours do you want to use?

Once you've made those decisions it's time to start assembling your card. It's always a good idea to lay out the pieces first before you start to stick them down just so you're sure that the design is correct. It's not uncommon for a design that looks great in your head to need a little adjustment when it comes to putting it onto card.

Make use of different textures and materials, layer items for additional effect, use different colored base cards to build your design on (handmade cards do not have to be white).

Make use of the many transfers and embellishment available which have letters on them to personalize your cards.

Make sure your card is both beautiful, and unique and you never know, you might become addicted to card making.

 I'd always advise to start with cards that do not need much in the way of special equipment, as that way you get to find out whether you really like card making before spending money on equipment you'll never use again.

However if you do decide you like it there are many different areas of card making you can go into such as stamping, decoupage, printed images, or making your own designs using cricut machines or similar.

If you do want to take it further you may want to see whether you can make any money out of your hobby, in which case you should take a look at this information on selling handmade cards.