Time-Friendly, Free Birthday Cards

Normally when it’s someone’s birthday, you get so caught up with deciding on a present that you forget about the card; fortunately, the Internet and your PC can provide you with thousands of free happy birthday cards! (But you will probably only need one.) I’m not going to lie; I never really remember that you can send cards via email for various occasions. I mean sure, you get the occasional “birthday card” through the birthday card app on Facebook, but for the most part it’s seemed that people write a simply happy birthday message through the various social networking websites that you may use.

It always comes as a surprise to me when I open my old Yahoo! email to find cards for various occasions from my parents. (I’m not sure why they simply cannot adapt to me using a new email provider.) One thing that’s for sure, though, is that there are constantly new and clever cards, and many of them are even better than the store-bought ones—the fact that they’re free just tops the cake! Not to mention the fact that they literally take less than a minute to write in and send off.

Free Birthday Cards from a Distance

How often have you planned to go to a birthday party, but had to cancel last minute or realized that it wasn’t feasible to attend in the first place? (And then there’s the case where we didn’t even want to go, but that’s a whole different story.) Regardless of why you cannot see the honoree on their special day, they will probably be overjoyed that you remembered that it was their birthday and “went out of your way” to email them a card. I put this in quotes, because it’s such a simple, quick, and easy task; what might take you a couple of minutes to do will seem like a world of effort on the receiver’s end.

Free birthday e cards are abundant all over the Internet; you can find customizable cards, singing or animated cards or preset cards that already have a message within them. For most websites, after you have determined which of the free birthday cards online you will choose, simple type in a message (or leave it blank if there’s already a preset message, if you’d like), and then you fill out the basic user information, such as their email and yours, and send it off! If you’re not too picky about which card you’re sending, then this task will literally take you less than a minute. On the other hand, if you need to find the “perfect card”, then one could argue that you could have spent that time heading to the party rather than finding a card to email, but either way the websites are so user-friendly that even if you did spend time looking for the best card, it likely wouldn’t take you longer than fifteen minutes.

Easy to “Make” and Free Birthday Cards

In the event that you are going to the party and simply haven’t bought or made a card, then you can once again turn to your computer for help. More often than not, the same websites that offer eCards will also supply you with a wide array of free printable birthday cards! Unfortunately, you aren’t likely to find an animated birthday card to print, but there are assortments of other fun cards! For example, if you don’t want a simple foldable card, then you could print out a layered card. Naturally when you print this, it won’t already be layered, but you’ll be asked to cut along the dotted lines (this may differ depending on the card) and subsequently to glue certain parts together. This will result in a lovely layered card, sometimes with a window and sometimes with a pop-up when you open it. In all seriousness, there are countless various designs for free printable birthday cards, in fact you can even color in some of them yourself—it may be more convenient to ask your little one to color it in for you, though. (And if they go outside of the lines, just claim that it’s abstract art!)

Now you may be thinking that printing out the cards yourself will look cheap, but this is where you can start being creative and make it look like Martha Stewart made it herself. Many art supply stores will carry thicker paper; some of them might even have embroideries in it already for a fancier design. Just pop these into your printer rather than your regular print paper and you now have free happy birthday cards that look as good as one made by Hallmark—maybe even better depending on whether or not you wrote a personal message on the inside! After all, free birthday cards may sound like a cheap alternative, but that doesn’t mean that you need to make them look like a cheap alternative.

written by Rebecca, birthday December 3rd