The finished card.

For a long time the kids have preferred to make their own birthday cards for friends. This often involves drawing the birthday child on the card doing something they like or just holding birthday balloons, eating cake, etc. Now they want to make their cards more sophisticated on the outside, and still fill the centre with drawings.

Sticking tissue paper to the card.

Today L made a very simple card using coloured tissue paper circles layered on a plain white card. We used circles because that was what we had, but any shape could work. Next time I’d like to try ripping up small pieces of tissue paper and covering the card with them for a different effect.

Tissue paper drying on the card.

L used a glue stick to apply glue to the card, and then carefully placed the tissue paper circles, overlapping them here and there to combine the colours, until the whole card was covered. Some of the circles overhung the card, and these we folded into the inside of the card and glued down. Alternatively, we could have carefully cut this extra tissue paper off at the edge of the card to leave the centre completely free for writing and pictures.

The outside of the card.

How the inside of the card looked after folding the tissue paper in.

Once the glue was dry, L wrote her birthday salutations inside, including some lovely drawings, and it was ready to go.