Homemade Birthday Cards

I really liked scrapbooking, but it takes up so much space and time that I just never seem to finish a project or have the energy to drag everything out to even work on it. I have a wedding, baby, and vacation albums I have been needing to finish for about 3 years now. So, instead of actually finshing them, I have changed my attention from scrapbooking to card making... and what can I say.... I loooove it.

It is easier to finish a project and cheaper to keep up with. Plus, with all my cards laying around I try to challenge myself to use them more and show people gratitude and love with them. So, I try to stock up on 'birthdays' and 'thank yous'. Cause, who doesn't love receiving a card in the mail.

I made this cute birthday card fairly easy and thought it turned out pretty good. Simple embellishments can make beautiful additions, my favorite are buttons. I practically put buttons on all my cards... cheap and cute.

For this card I used buttons, eyelets (the little metal circles in the top corner), a "Happy Birthday" stamp, stitching with embroidery thread, and corner tabs (the orange triangle things).

Buttons are pretty self explanatory... glue, stick, and voila!.

The eyelets are small metal circles that you can punch through paper with an eyelet setter and hammer. You can purchase eyelet setters from Michael's or Joann's and you will have two choices; either a Crop-A-Dile which is nice, cause everything you need is right there in that one tool, but it is a little bigger and can only reach so far pass the edge of the paper. Or... you can purchase a tool that punches a hole out and a tool that sets the eyelet. The Crop-A-Dile usually runs around $30 and the eyelet tools run about $10 (hole punch) and $5 (the setter). These are great because with these tools you can place the eyelet anywhere you want to.

To set the eyelets in place you will need to first: Punch a hole where you want the eyelet and put the eyelet into the hole and use the eyelet tool with a hammer to smash it into place. You will want to have something to protect the surface you are hammering. I used a normal hammer to set and a thick magazine for protection, but you can purchase a eyelet hammer which is nice and small and a setting mat that are each $5.

The corner tabs on the card are simply made by cutting a square in half diagonally, which will leave you will 2 triangles. You can either use a square punch to get your square or cut it out by hand. Now you will cut out a small triangle from of the middle of the big triangles, leaving the tabs that are perfect for embellishing open spaces and edges.

Those are just a few of my tricks and tools that I used for this card. Feel free to ask any questions about other things that you see. I will be posting more cards and more tools in the future.