How to make a personal birthday card?

Everyone knows the struggle: a friend or relative celebrates his or her birthday, and of course that means a personal gift needs to be selected. However, selecting the perfect gift is no easy task, it requires dedication, creativity, and empathy to figure out the answer to the one question: What does this person truly want?

You want your gift to be original, personal, and to hold a deeper meaning, showing how much you appreciate the person who celebrates his or her birthday. A gift which meets all these requirements is a personal birthday card.

Down here are 10 steps you need to take to design and make such a personal card. I will illustrate all 10 steps with an example birthday card I made myself. So let’s start!

10 steps you need to take to create your own personal birthday gift card:

Who is the card for? First of all it is very important to know who the card is for and what his or her link to you is, while that influences what kind of card you are going to make. In my case I made the card for a good friend.
What does the receiver of the card like? What are his/her hobbies? What sport does he/she do/like? Does he/she owns pets? Does he/she has a job? It is very important to get a clear and complete image of the person you are designing the card for. Of course, since you probably know this person well you already know these things, but it can help to run through a small list in your head to refresh this information. I brainstormed about these aspects till I came upon one aspect which appealed to me, and already provided me with a good idea of what the card should look like. Of course, you don’t already need to have an idea right away, but it does help you if you have.
Decide upon which “aspect(s)” of you receiver’s life you are going to focus in the card. You cannot include all hobbies, sports, etc. in the card, you therefore need to make choices. I decided to base my card on the 3 cats owned by my friend.
Come up with a rich idea for the design of the card. This is probably the toughest step in the design process of your own birthday card, but nonetheless the most important step, because without inspiration it is very hard to create a nice looking card. Focus on your chosen “aspect” and brainstorm about ways to give meaning to this “aspect on the paper. When you are still having trouble coming up with an idea you can also take a look at the internet, in magazines, and on posters for inspiration. Maybe seeing other (card) designs, or images of your focus point an idea will start to form in your head. In this step I came up with the idea that I wanted to depict all 3 cats on my card, they should appear to be singing (because singing cannot be missed on a party), and the text should be Happy Birthday to You, but than slightly altered to fit better with the cats on the card.
Create a design based on your rich idea. In this step you are going to turn your ideas into a real image/rough sketch on a paper. When putting your thoughts to paper you’ll get more insight in what works and what doesn’t, you’ll have the chance to fix problems that arise, and create a clear plan of what the card will look like. Furthermore you also need to decide what materials you’ll use: what size of paper do you use? Will you use pencils, paint, watercolor? Do you want to add depth in your card by adding some cardboard behind certain images/words, so they stand out? In this step I drew the cats as circles (this design can be very rough, and doesn’t have to look exactly like the desired result), and sketched the text above it, looking at the way the text should be placed on the paper (all in one line, 2 lines, 3 lines, that are all things you have to think about). I decided to use A4 watercolor paper and watercolor paint.
Make your sketch. Now the most challenging steps have already been taken, you’ve created a clear image of what the card should look like, and all there is left to do is draw the design neatly onto a thick double folded paper. I sketched my cats and the text onto my card.
Add text to the card. Now it is time for adding the text to your card. Getting the text right is very important in conveying the message, and you can make it as crazy as you want. The words don’t actually have to exist, you can play a bit with language. I decided upon the text: Happy birthday to mjouw. Of course everyone knows the birthday song: happy birthday to you, so I wanted to add part of this text to my card. However, I did decide to change the final word you, which translates to Dutch as jou. I wanted to combine this Dutch word (jou) with the onomatopoeia of the sound made by a cat (miauw). I have been thinking about the spelling of this mix word, but eventually came up with mjouw a good mix of miauw and jou.
Color the card. In this step the real fun can begin, because your card is getting more and more form. You can start to add color, and make it as exuberant as you like. I like adding many colors to my card, especially in the letters, because that helps in spreading the joyful message that aligns with the birthday party, but of course that is totally up to you.
Finishing touches. Now is the moment to change the tiny details you don’t like and add (when desired) little details in the background to fill the rest of the card. I decided to add some false music notes (of course cats cannot sing purely) to the card to fill the empty space. I also added the names of my friends cats as a final personal detail (and to compensate for my lacking ability to draw cats).
Stop in time, it doesn’t have to be perfect!