Day 207: This years birthday card?

Well little could follow the success of the lollipop card of last year... If anything they were a little tricky to fit into an envelope so often got tucked underneath the ribbon to decorate a parcel, which for one thing makes them an easy gift tag - child sees lolly + child sees my child's face smiling at them 'holding' that lolly = they know who that present is from, and the other thing is that I've seen the success among the excited faces when Holly arrives at a party and the girls check to see if they are going to get one and tell each other VERY enthusiastically how they got one of those on their present. They LOVE them and thankfully they have managed to fall into 'cult status symbol' category rather than 'overdone'! So the boys ones still have mileage while Elijah has started in reception and this is the year of the class parties but I needed a new idea for boys who've had one of these already. Where do you go from a lolly card? Well I'm not going to try to top it yet - maybe next year we'll do some personalised marshmallow craft or something - or learn to make rock with their names in... but lets keep it simple for a busy year... I always struggle with boy and mens cards... they're always a bit silly. I hate buying cards for men because generally they are rubbish but I also hate making them because I have only really seen rubbish ones... so it is my challenge to make a good one by the end of this year which doesnt follow the line of design process that goes...'errrr...you are a man... maybe you like errrr...boats? So, I know...here is a boat...so...Happy Birthday...!' Boys are less difficult but now I've done googly eye animals, I've done bears, I've done clowns, safari boys and pirates and am having to think slightly more growing up ish... so this is this years very simple effort... The 'age out of objects' theme!

How extremely simple and easy is that... !?? In fact I did this a while back... and just thought of it while tidying up after a play party or something... so cars on the toybox -photo and boom that's your photo to print onto a nice plain square card! (mini ones are lovely and as little as 5p each from craft creations) Whole thing including printing ink and envelope will still make them less than 10p per card - which is a HUGE saving if you're otherwise getting through 40+ cards per child per year at standard greeting card costs...and I had fun theraputically lining up cars and sweets to make shapes... some of us are just sad like that!