The Happiest Birthday Card

Goddaughter Genevieve is definitely getting the paper and glue bug and when she came around last Thursday for pizza we spent another happy 4 hours cutting and pasting up a card for her younger sister Susie's birthday.

We decided we wanted a colourful funky card to reflect Susie's personality and we wanted a funky design.  A couple of weeks ago I had seen a folded card which I thought would be quirky enough and after a quick prototype in printer paper (my attempts to describe the folds were abysmal failures!) we agreed on that shape.

We considered some shrink plastic flower embellishments - and although we had a great time making them they weren't right for the card so have been put aside for another day.

In the end we decided to let the colourful card be the focal point so we cut triangles to fit into each of the spaces in 4 colours.  We cut out a few co-ordinating hearts and flowers using the Imagine and added in a 'Celebrate' I had leftover from the invitations to decorate the outside.  A couple of gems in the centre of the flowers and we were almost done.

For the inside we used the Beaded Square Spellbinders to cut a pink frame, layered on a piece of silver mirror card and added a final layer of the same pink with Happy Birthday cut out (again using the Imagine).

Gen and I love it - and I hope Susie does when she opens it tomorrow!

FOLDING THE BASE CARD
Years of dipping in and out of origami over the years helped with recreating what I'd seen.  If you are interested below are some measuring/folding insructions for a card made out of a 8x8 inch square card (we used a 10x10 square piece of Core-dinations green for the card).

1. Along each edge score a line at 2 inches (NOTE: if you are using another size card, replace 2.5 inches with 1/4 the size of the card - eg 2.5 inches for a 10 inch square, 3 inches for a 12 inch square)

Fold each edge towards the centre along the score line, and then unfold it. 

In this photo I've coloured the score line orange so you can see it -- clearly you shouldn't mark yours  - unless you want to for some reason - in which case you should! :)

2. On each corner score a line between the two score lines.  Probably easier if you look at the photo -- it's the dashed blue line (again coloured only so you can see it!).  Fold each corner to the back and then unfold it.

3.  Finally, score a line between the centre of each side to the centre of the next side.  (See the brown line in the photo.)  Fold along each of these score lines to the back and then unfold it.

(Honest this is easier to do than for me to write!)

Finally - you are ready to fold the card into it's final shape!  If you have carefully prepped the fold lines as above you can bring the centre points together and this funky little shape will appear.  You may have to do some coaxing the first time - use this photograph as a guide.

Now you can decorate as you like!