Handmade Birthday Place Cards: Three Easy Styles

Handmade birthday place cards take a few scraps of cardstock and about an evening, and they are one of the few decorations every guest picks up and looks at closely. That makes them a good place to spend a little care on clean folds and neat writing.

Three styles cover almost every table: a folded tent card, a small flag standing in a base, and a tag tied to the napkin or cup. All three are cut from the same paper, so you can choose one or mix them across two tables.

What you need

• White or light cardstock, about 65 lb (176 gsm), for the part that carries the name
• Colored cardstock scraps for bands and cut-paper shapes
• Toothpicks, wooden skewers trimmed short, or paper straws for the flag style
• Small bases for the flags: corks, large wooden beads or balls of removable mounting putty
• Twine or narrow ribbon for the tag style
• Scissors, ruler, pencil, eraser, glue stick, hole punch
• A bone folder, or an empty ballpoint pen, for scoring
• A pen or marker that does not smear on your cardstock

The three styles at a glance

The tent card is the most stable and gives the most writing room. The flag takes the least table space. The tag has no fold to get wrong and doubles as a cup label, which is useful when several identical cups end up on one table.

Write the names first

Write every name while the card is still a flat, undecorated blank. A spelling mistake at this stage costs one small rectangle; after the shapes are glued on, it costs the whole card. Cut two or three spare blanks for the same reason.

1. Rule a faint pencil baseline where the name will sit. On a tent card that is the lower half of the blank, about 1/2 in (12 mm) up from the bottom edge.
2. Lightly pencil the name, starting from the middle letter and working outward if you want it centered.
3. Go over it in pen with slow, even strokes, and let the ink dry fully.
4. Erase the pencil line only when the ink no longer shines.

Short names can be written larger; long names need smaller letters rather than letters squeezed together at the end. Penciling first is what shows you which is which.

Style 1: the tent card

1. Cut a blank 3.5 in wide and 4 in tall (9 x 10 cm).
2. Mark the halfway point, 2 in (5 cm), on both side edges.
3. Lay a ruler across the two marks and score along it with a bone folder or an empty ballpoint pen, pressing firmly but not hard enough to tear the surface.
4. Fold along the score with the scored line on the outside of the fold and sharpen the crease with the bone folder.
5. Glue a colored band about 1/2 in (12 mm) tall along the bottom of the front face.
6. Cut a small shape, such as a star or a crown about 1.5 in (4 cm) across, and glue only its lower half to the front so the upper half rises above the fold.

Scoring is what makes the card stand square. An unscored fold in cardstock wanders, cracks along the ridge and leaves one face longer than the other, so the card leans or slides flat. If your folds come out rough, the guide on cutting, scoring and folding paper explains the pressure and tools in more detail.

Style 2: a flag in a small base

Cut a strip about 1 in wide and 4 in long (2.5 x 10 cm) and write the name on the right-hand half. Run a glue stick over the back, lay a toothpick or straw across the middle and fold the strip in half around it, pressing the two halves together. Trim the free end straight, or cut a small V into it for a swallowtail.

Push the stick into a base. A cork standing on its flat end works well; so does a large wooden bead or a ball of removable mounting putty pressed onto the table. If the flag spins, add a dot of tacky glue where the stick enters the base.

Style 3: a tag tied to the napkin or cup

Cut a rectangle about 2 x 3 in (5 x 7.5 cm), clip the two top corners at an angle and punch a hole between them. Write the name, thread 12 in (30 cm) of twine through the hole and tie it around a rolled napkin or the stem or handle of a cup. Layering the white rectangle on a slightly larger colored one gives it a border with one extra cut.

This is the same construction used for handmade party favor tags, so one cutting session can supply both the table and the favor bags.

Making a batch that matches

Work in stages rather than finishing one card at a time. Cut long strips 3.5 in (9 cm) wide first, then chop them into blanks, so every card has the same width without measuring each one. Score them all, write them all, then decorate them all. Stacking four layers of scrap paper and cutting through the stack gives you four identical stars per cut.

Store finished tent cards folded flat under a book until the party so they open crisply, and set them out last, once plates and cups are in place.