If you need to send someone a special hello but you’re on a budget or just set on sending an envelope-shaped gift, then making a card with your own two crafty hands is the way to go. Making cards is easy and affordable. Even if you’re living off cereal you can use the cereal box as the backing for your card and some old pasta to create noodle-inspired art.

If you’re still feeling uninspired, we’ve created a list of ideas (with pictures,) that we offer to you from our noggin to yours, that will help get your creative river flowing. So grab some scissors and glue, put on a stylish apron and let’s get crafty!

OLD MIX TAPE

Once you bought your CD player there was no room in your life for music tapes anymore. Those little spokes that miraculously played music are now another piece of cumbersome plastic in your bedroom junk pile. Today you are going to free them from the trash and reinvigorate them into art.

Draw a basic picture of your recipient on the front of your piece of card. Unwind your tape and cut into hair length pieces that reflect the current locks of your recipient. Now recreate your friend’s hair with pieces of tape glued to your card. You are now a crafting wizard.

BITS, BOBS & BUTTONS

Pay a visit to your local charity store and find old jewellery, buttons and beads to create your masterpiece. Try and find like colours so you can build your images into coherent shapes.

Draw an outline of your picture on your card. You may like to do a face or even just a balloon for a happy birthday card. Fill your object with the colours you chose and then create a background in a different colour. If you’re using your gift recipient’s face as inspiration, use different colour beads and buttons to create shade and light. If you can pull this one off you earn the crafting genius badge.

COLLAGE

Take one old magazine, a pair of scissors and some glue. From here the options are endless – well endless within your use of these three items. You can cut out pretty pictures that you like and create a landscape or just cut out colours and create your own abstract wonder. Magazines allow you to cut out bits of text too so perhaps you could add something witty about the gravitational effects of turning forty on the body. Everybody loves a good joke about their age.

SEWING

Why not create a card with needle and thread? With one colour of wool or yarn you can create a shape like a heart for Valentine’s or a Christmas tree shape. Outline the shape you want to do on your card in pencil. Then poke the holes through the outline of the card with your needle and erase the pencil. Now, thread the colour you’re using onto your needle and sew the colour through the holes you’ve created until you’ve filled in the shape. Easy!

GLITTER

We all love the shiny stuff. If makes us happy. That means that glitter is the perfect addition to a birthday card where you want to add a sweet comment like ‘you make me sparkle’. Draw a shape on your card then paint your glue inside the lines of the shape. Add glitter (liberally). Remove excess and present with a flourish.