Simple Speech Bubble Cards

I needed a couple of quick, simple personalised cards the other day. I had just found some lovely geometric, really thick quality wrapping paper in one of my favourite shops in Leamington Spa, Berylune. They have a "tiny but packed with lovely things" shop, a blog and a website. 
There was lots of beautiful paper to choose from, loads of lovely neon colours with stars and shapes and I had to exercise extreme self control to limit myself to just these three. 

The paper is quite busy so I wanted the cards to be simple and modern - at least that is what I was aiming for.

If you want to make your own, you will need:

• Card blank and envelope (mine are just regular little A6 cards)
• Lovely paper (scrapbook paper or thick matt wrapping paper is ideal)
• Glue (I used Pritt Stick)
• Computer - although you could just draw your speech bubble by hand
• Laminator & laminating pouch - again not essential but this is what I used
• Sticky foam pads

First make the speech bubbles on the computer in word:

Open up word and make a new document, then click insert, picture, autoshapes then choose callout. There are a few different ones but I like these with the rounded corners.
You just click in the shape to start typing the words you want.
I played around with fonts and sizes (I only have the standard fonts the computer came with but I know you can downloads lovely ones from the internet)

I also made the outline of the speech bubble a bit thicker to make cutting out easier later. You do this by clicking on the speech bubble, selecting "format autoshape" then changing the line weight on the "Colors and lines" tab. (mine was 2pt but you could do even more)

I added a few non personalised bubbles to the page, so I could make more cards keep them in my stash - may as well fill the sheet of paper whilst I was doing this!
You can also play around with where the triangle-y bit is pointing just by moving the yellow dot at the point. You can make it shorter or longer but it flips itself from side to side if you move to too far across.
When I was happy with them all I printed it on decent quality paper (120 g/ms).

Next I laminated the paper. I love having a laminator, it was a present one birthday or Christmas from my Dad well over 10 years ago and at the time it seemed like a slightly strange present (sorry Dad!) Turns out it was a fantastic present, over the years we've used it for all sorts of things.
If you don't have one you could just print your bubbles on card, but I like the shiny plastic effect laminating them gives.

Cut the bubbles out, roughly first...

...then neatly and carefully. This is when the thicker black outline really does make it much easier.

Next cover the front of the card blank with patterned paper. I find this easiest to do if you cut the paper out a bit bigger than the card front, put a thin layer of glue all over the wrong side then lay the card front down onto it.

Then press it down firmly all over with a bone folder, (mine is the one from my header photo! If you don't have one, a clean wooden lolly stick works fine too) and trim the excess (with cheap Ikea scissors apparently!)

(the yellow butterfly and flower paper is some from my stash, which I thought might be nice for the cards for the little girls)

All you need to do now is attach the speech bubble to the card with foam pads to lift it off a bit.

The laminated speech bubbles are more shiny in real life than the photos show, which contrasts nicely with the matt of the paper.

You might also be interest in:

Birdcage Card Ideas

Circle card Crazy

Personalised Wedding Picture

Recycled Pen Tub Tutorial

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties, pop over for a look at loads of projects from other blogs