DIY - Solom's Angry Birds birthday invites

This is my first crafty post (only literally speaking). My little boy is turning four! FOUR. You know what I'm thinking: if the past four years seemed like a lifetime, the next four years are going to be an eternity!

Anyway, to make passing this time more bearable (and also because I'm super excited about the theme for Solom's birthday this year) I decided to make the invitation cards for his party by hand. With a little cheating, of course.

There are tonnes and tonnes of ideas for Angry Birds birthday parties all over the net. This invite became the inspiration for the one I wound up doing for Solom (link here).

It seemed easy to do, got the point across and HAD MOVING, 3-D EYES FOR GOD'S SAKE. Loved it! It really got my creative cells jumping, so I decided to adapt this concept for Solom's cards. Here's how.

First, I dug up an image of the King Pig from the net and got it printed on card paper with a regular laser printer. Then I folded the paper and cut it, leaving the fold at the ears so that it became a two-layer, opening card.

Next, pasted a message on the inside and a small magnet at the back of the card. The purpose of the magnet, other than to make the card super-cool, was to enable invitees to put the card up on their fridges so that they wouldn't miss the date (we gave the cards out a little early).

Once that was done, I pasted a reduced size, photocopied map of directions over the magnet. This ensured optimal use of the space on the card and also secured the magnet (although it did leave a mysterious-looking bump in the middle that some people thought was a chocolate coin). Then I just trimmed the edges of the map along the outline of the card.

And finally, my favourite part: the eyes! Got them at Rs. 6 apiece from the same art shop that stocked the magnets. They really made the image pop!

To make the card brighter, I used permanent marker to outline some of the features (you'll see the difference in the final product below). The cards were labour intensive but for a closet craft-freak like me they were totally worth the effort. The end result was a richly layered card that was small in size but high on impact and functionality.

Dontcha love 'em? Say you do!