Football-Themed Birthday Card

Posted on 12th July 2024 by Angela Dodson
Filed under Projects And Cards By Type, Happy Birthday Card Ideas, Cards For Men, Design Team

The great game of football has an unbeatable ability to bring together friends and family, as the shared passion between fans builds strong bonds through the highs and lows of competitions. When you want to celebrate someone's birthday, a handmade card is a great way to personalise the event and choosing a theme that matches their passion (like football) will really show how much you care about them. Read on to follow our helpful craft guide to create your own unique football-themed birthday card.

Inspiration to Personalise Your Football-Themed Card

Before we get to the step-by-step guide, you'll need a few things. First is inspiration! This can come from many places and sources; for example, Pinterest is a popular place to be inspired by craft designs, but your final decision will depend heavily on what your loved one loves about the game, what competitions are on and most importantly, who they support.

Are Any Football Competitions Coming Soon?

Ask yourself if your recipient is a Euros or Premier League fan, or consider when the next World Cup is coming up. If one of these exciting events is round the corner, then you could include references and elements in your card design to help make it more personal to their passion. Dates and locations can be included, or the two competing teams can be added to make it very specific.

Pick the Right Team

Whilst a generalised card is nice, making one that includes the receiver's specific team will make a big improvement in personalising the card, and of course, getting the wrong team will cause a lot more harm than good. The step-by-step materials and craft guide we have supplied below explain how to make a wonderful football-themed birthday card, but we encourage you to customise the general elements to suit these personalisation ideas.

What You Will Need to Make Your Card

Now you have a good idea of what you want your card to look like, you'll need the best quality card-making supplies available online. Here is the list of card supplies you’ll need to complete the guide provided below; however, remember to change your order to suit any personalisation, such as a team shirt colour.

• Smooth Black Card 250gsm – Papermilldirect
• Plain White Card 250gsm – Papermilldirect
• Forest Green 120gsm – Papermilldirect
• Green pattern paper, newsprint pattern paper
• Adhesives: clear drying glue, double sided tape
• Cutting tools: a Circuit Explorer or sharpened craft knife

Once you have collected your tools, supplies and design, you're ready to 'kick-off' your card crafting. Angela Dodson supplied the step-by-step guide below from her blog, Polly Purple Horse, one of our valued design team contributors to our craft guides.

Anglea’s Guide to Making a Handmade Football Birthday Card

Hello, it's Angela here to share a card design with you. This week, I made a football-themed card for a family birthday using my Cricut Explore. If you have a Circuit Explore, you will need a DS file to provide the cutter with the design information needed. Alternatively, there are other methods you can use.

Firstly, you can draw a design on your coloured paper and cut it out. Another more advanced method is to create a line drawing of your design and print it with a faded opacity straight onto the card to create a machine-accurate guide for cutting.

If you like the hands-on method, use tracing paper to copy a design printed from any online source and use the tracing paper to copy the cutting lines to the card. These can then be safely cut using a sharpened craft knife. Remember, dull knives create more accidents as you need to work harder to make cuts and encourage accidental slips.

This was an opportunity to test out the new 120gsm papers, and I've used the Forest Green for this make; it cuts easily with no dragging and no tearing and is easy to remove from the mat. It is also layered up neatly using clear drying glue without wrinkling or marking. You can also see how well the Black 250gsm card cuts. I am using a normal bladeand it has no trouble cutting the intricate cutouts; check out the tiny cutouts on the small football in the footballer shape.

Creating the Decorations

Cut card shape from PMD smooth black card (creates a 5x7" card base with cutout section.) Using PMD plain white card and black card for the football shape. PMD smooth black, plain white and forest green paper for footballers.

Layer up the shapes using a clear drying glue. Cut grass shapes from PMD forest green paper and green pattern paper.

Mat and layer a rectangle of grey newsprint paper 2 ½" x 3 ¼" onto the slightly larger rectangle of green paper and add to the left-hand side of the card front.

Layer up the football on the card front using clear drying glue and add the footballer to the panel on the left.

Cut a panel of green pattern paper for the inside card and a rectangle of white card to write your sentiment inside.

Add strips of grass across the bottom of the card front, glueing along the bottom edge only so you can shape the grass with your fingers to create texture.

Add a Happy Birthday greeting or personalisation to the bottom.

At Papermill Direct, we have built a broad stock of coloured cards, blanks, and tools to guarantee that we have something to improve on in any project. You'll find all the arts and craft supplies you'll ever need in our online store, but if you're struggling to find what you need, contact us directly, and we'll help you find it.

Tagged: design team