I love making handmade birthday cards and have been doing this now for around two decades. I have found it tremendously satisfying, soothing and rewarding to come up with my own handmade cards. It's a fantastic technique to unwind, to sit down with all my card making paraphernalia spread out around me and to simply allow the creative juices to flow!

A handmade greeting card may be as elaborate or as straight forward as you would like it to be. A very simple layout can be extremely elegant and highly effective. Straightforward layouts are a great choice for the beginner to card making to begin with. Consider mounting a die-cut decoupage graphic on to a blank card accompanied by a peel off sticker sentiment to complete the handcrafted card, a simple design to produce with not a whole lot of gear required, however really interesting and impressive.

When you have perfected simple designs, experiment with building on those ideas. Introduce another embellishment such as a bow or maybe a ready to use topper. Start including background papers to just a portion or all of the card blank and include glittery or pearlised accents by using decorative glues. Rather than a decoupage graphic, try rubber stamping an image on top of some card, colour the rubber stamped picture with coloured pencils or watercolour paints, cut around the stamped image in a rectangle or square shape and after that stick that rubber stamped picture on the card blank. Your designs will quickly grow into larger, improved and more sophisticated designs. Using a little effort it is possible to come up with some very striking designs.

Whenever you sit down to make a Birthday card, first of all it is advisable to think about is who the greeting card is for. Will it be for a young person or an adult, is it for a man or a woman, what are their interests and hobbies?. It usually is good to integrate a little something personal to the birthday card. If for example the card is designed for a golf enthusiast, a golfing picture, with golfing embellishments will produce an ideal birthday card and will suggest that a great amount of consideration went into your card.

When you've chosen your style for your card, you should decide on your colour scheme. A colour palette for a card can be directed by the colours in a decoupage image or possibly a ready made decoration that you've already chosen. Select a couple of colours from that decoupage picture or embellishment and utilize those colours through the rest of the card, colour co-ordinating all ribbons, accessories or backing papers to those two colours. Should you use a rubber stamped picture then it is easy to colour this picture with your individual colour scheme and build on that scheme with colour co-ordinated additions.

To completely personalise the hand made birthday card, you could also include the person's name within the design of the card. This can be done by employing peel off sticker lettering, clear alphabet stamp lettering or if you've got a steady hand, you can hand write his or her name using a decorative ink or glitter glue.

As a final point printing an insert for the birthday card using a lovely personal message such as a poem or lovely message definitely finishes your hand made birthday cards.