Making Birthday Cards From Everyday Materials

You don't need a whole host of specialist supplies to make cards. Pre-cut card blanks are very useful as they come with envelopes that are exactly the right size- but otherwise you can use anything you like to make cards. It's particularly fun for children to get creative!

I made this first card for a friend called Jane. The name piece actually comes from the packaging for a travel toiletry set from Soap & Glory called Plane Jane. I cut out the name and used that as the centre piece of the card! The pink circle is from the same packaging so I mounted that on a similar-coloured piece of pink backing paper, to keep all the elements within the same colour palette. The flower stickers were a free gift with a magazine and I used them to cover the Soap & Glory logo and to add a few more decorative touches.

 You can also recycle cards that you receive. I always used to do this with Christmas cards to make gift tags for next year's Christmas presents, but you can do it with any cards. Here the centre piece of the card - the white square with happy birthday and the picture of the present - is from a card I received. I chose a pre-printed card blank in a complementary colour and mounted the piece of card on it. Finally I used a silver border sticker to go around each side to frame the picture.