Birthday card ideas anyone can make

Easy DIY birthday card ideas

All of these need paper, scissors, glue and about 20 minutes. Birthday cards are the most popular kind Americans buy, out of about 6.5 billion greeting cards a year (news.usps.com/2019/09/26/facts-on-paper), so a homemade one stands out on the shelf.

• 1. The photo pop-up. Cut two short slits across the fold, push the tab inside, and glue a cut-out photo of them to it. They open the card and their own face jumps out.
• 2. The number card. Draw their age huge on the front and fill each digit with tiny photos, ticket stubs or doodles from the past year.
• 3. Reasons I like you. Write as many reasons as their age. If you run out at 31 and write “still nice” sixteen times, that's the joke.
• 4. The pull-tab reveal. Slide a strip of paper through a slot so that pulling it shows the punchline, the gift or their real age.
• 5. The scratch-off. Write a secret line, cover it with clear tape, and paint over it with two parts acrylic paint to one part dish soap. Once it dries, they scratch it off with a coin.
• 6. The fake magazine cover. Their photo, a big title, and headlines like “Local legend still can't fold a fitted sheet.”
• 7. The map card. Sketch the places you've been together, from the first coffee to the worst road trip, with a tiny note at each stop.
• 8. The coupon book. Staple five coupons inside: one dinner, one car wash, one “you pick the movie, no debate.”

Funny birthday card ideas

Funny cards work when the joke is about them, not about birthdays in general. Steal these formats and fill in the details only you know.

• 9. The fake award. A certificate for Lifetime Achievement in Being Late, or Most Improved at Replying to Texts.
• 10. Expectation vs. reality. Two panels: how they think their birthday looks, and how it really looks. The format goes back to a 1921 cartoon, the likely first meme ever.
• 11. The product label. Draw them as a bottle with ingredients (80% coffee, 15% opinions, 5% cake) and a vintage year.
• 12. The wanted poster. Wanted for eating the last slice. Reward: one hug. Last seen near the fridge.
• 13. Too many candles. Draw a cake with so many candles it needs its own smoke alarm, and write “we ran out of room” inside.
• 14. Their face in a meme. Put their photo into a format they know and add a caption about their age. We keep 49 captions on our birthday memes page.
• 15. The card that stars them. One good photo, one absurd scene: rock star, skydiver, the person popping out of the cake. That's what our birthday cards do, and the stories of seven of them are below.

What to write in a birthday card

Three lines are enough: one specific memory, one wish for the year ahead, one sign-off that sounds like you. “Happy birthday” can be the fourth line, since they already know.

If you're stuck, borrow from our birthday wishes and change one detail so it could only be for them. And if the date already passed, read up on happy belated birthday first.

How we made our cake cards

Every card we sell was tried many times on our test family first. None of them exist: they're made-up people from 2 to 82 years old, plus a corgi and a cat. Each take is graded on four things: does it still look like them, is it funny, does it fit the card, is it well made. Most takes don't make it.

Our first cake test was a face-plant: Dave, 38, who doesn't exist, lifting his head out of his own office cake. One take gave him two party hats, a face so full of frosting you couldn't tell it was him, and a cake with every candle still standing. The Cake Face card has him popping up out of a giant cake instead, with frosting on his nose and eyebrows only, so you can still tell who's in the cake.

Made You a Cake turns the person into a sculpted cake of their own head, three candles on top. The joke lives in the video: a fork digs into the top of the head and rainbow sprinkles pour out. Its rule is very specific: the fork stays at the top of the head, never near the eyes. The first cake of Dave read as some ginger guy, not Dave, so we check the face shape and hairline on every one.

Birthday Goat Yoga taught us the strangest rule. Yoga poses tip the head down, and a head tipped down stops looking like anyone. So the person kneels upright, a baby goat in a party hat stands on their shoulder, and in the video the goat does the crime: it buries its face in the cake.

How we made our brave birthday cards

Still Lit began as one of our first test ideas: Walter, 82, skydiving with his cheeks flapping in the wind and a birthday cake in his hands. The takes had ideas of their own. One gave him a huge white mustache he has never had. Another added a third arm and a cow. The card that shipped stars a grandma mid-jump with a cupcake whose single candle refuses to go out; in the video she blows it out and it lights itself again. About half of our graded takes of the grandparents came back looking younger, so the prompt says it outright: keep her age.

Rock Star puts anyone on a stadium stage with a guitar, smoke, colored lights and a crowd holding up phone lights. Mei, 76, made up, tested it. One take floated a cake into her guitar, grew a microphone out of the cake and put a chicken on a stick in the crowd. The finished card parks the cake on the drum riser, where it behaves.

Buried in Balloons is what happens when someone says “grab a few balloons” and nobody stops them. Early takes of Sofia, 30, either stood her politely in front of the balloons, which misses the joke, or drew her as a cartoon with OVER THE HILL printed on the balloons. At 30. The shipped card buries her to the shoulders, and the video sinks her completely, leaving her party hat bobbing on top until a thumbs-up pops out.

Over the Hill takes the old insult literally: a mountaineer on a snowy summit planting a flag shaped like a giant birthday candle, a cake in the backpack. The joke on the card is two words: summited, again. Where the phrase came from is in our over the hill post.