Birthday Easel Cards

Written and Created by PaperCraftCentral Susan

Make Birthday Easel Cards to give someone a special display on their special day. This card stands up once it is open and is a lot harder to knock over than a usual tent card.

"Your birthday is a special time to celebrate the gift of 'you' to the world"
~Anonymous

An Easel Card can display shapes, photos, messages and sentiments without the need for someone to open it up. Of course there is room inside to add a personal message that won't be read by anyone else but the receiver.

Here's how I made my own fancy fold card known as an easel card.

How to Make a Birthday Easel Card:

This technique is a lovely way to display a special greeting for a special someone on their special day.

Here I have drawn a rough star on cardstock, then cut it out and decorated it with glitter and stamps to form the front of my greeting.

I drew the star freehand (well, with the help of a ruler - lol!) on Barely Banana cardstock (it is retired now so you could use Daffodil Delight or Lemon Lolly cardstock instead) and stamped it up in Soft Suede ink (retired), a medium brown toned ink, with a sentiment from Stampin' Up!'s Perfect Punches stamp set (retired), before punching my sentiment out with the Large Oval paper punch (retired). I think the star images are from Stampin' Up!'s Seasons of Joy stamp set (retired).

I like to have all of my decorative elements and sentiments ready before I adhere them to my card base.

Remember. you do not have to feel you have to use the supplies and colours I used. Search your own stash for shapes, colours and sentiments that suit your own idea of what the receiver of your card will like.

The star shape here is just one idea. Make a greeting your own way. Scroll down to read more about what I mean.

I used designer paper from the retired Stampin' Up! Newsprint range to accent the star and sponged it with Soft Suede ink. Then I adhered it all to a card blank folded to be an easel card made from Elegant Eggplant cardstock (retired) but choose a deep purple if you want a card like mine.

I used Stampin' Dimensionals to pop up both the main star and the sentiment on the middle of my star.

As a reminder, I cut a normal sized card base, which for me is half an A4 sheet of cardstock, scored in the middle. The dimensions I use are 21cm x 14.9cm.

Looking at the card base in landscape mode, score the front half in the middle at the 5.75cm mark. Fold the flap under and burnish the fold well. This half of the card becomes your base for your main image when you open it back out. Be sure to only glue your elements to this flap up to the score line.

Inside I made a greeting out of more yellow cardstock and wrote a message out in my own handwriting before sponging it with a brown toned ink. I adhered it with Stampin' Dimensionals to a layer of Newsprint designer paper too and added some gold buttons with black ribbon tied through them to form the props for the front when the greeting was opened.

And it was done! It was a quick and easy project!

You could make your own shape for the front of your greeting of course. Just make it from a piece of cardstock that would normally be about the size of the front of your creation. That way it will fit into your envelope.Remember that a shape that overhangs the boundaries of a normal tent fold card will need to have an envelope that is larger than normal.

If you want to make your own envelope, feel free to break this rule and make the card as large as your hand made envelope!

If it doesn't matter that the greeting fits inside an envelope (say you were going to hand deliver it or it was for someone from your family, who you live with) then all you would have to worry about is that the size of the shape did not overbalance your project. Experiment with a few sizes and shapes and see what works best for your own purpose.

What can you make for a birthday easel card using current Stampin' Up! products?

How about a robot easel, or a cut out flower shape, or lego blocks, or hearts, or butterflies?

You can make these Birthday Easel Cards techniques work by using so many different images! You can also use this type of card layout to make cards for all occasions, nit just birthdays.

Now you may want to learn how to make some other fancy fold cards such as:

• Gatefold Cards
• Card Spinners
• Banner Cards

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