To Me? To You! A Very Happy Unbirthday Gift Tag

Unbirthday Gift Tag
A Very Happy UnBirthday!

The other weekend I attended a very unique type of party  – an Unbirthday party! Conceived in the wonderful imagination of my friend, everyone bought some of their favourite cake and a small gift to be given out randomly during the night. And when it comes to gifts, it’s time for me to make a card, or in this case a gift tag.

Because I didn’t know who would be receiving my gift, I wanted to create something that reflected the theme of the night. I went with a teapot based off those seen in the Disney Alice in Wonderland movie.


I also wanted to try something with typography, keeping it simple due the small space I had to work with.

Typography part
The sketched up message for the front
Unbirthday Teapot
The sketched up unbirthday teapot design
A Very Happy Unbirthday Typography
I redrew and aligned the text a few times before scanning it

Since I drew the message quite large compared to the teapot, I figured the best way to combine them for tracing was to digitally composite the two together.

Unbirthday Card Combined
Combined together and ready to be traced – darkened the teapot so it could be seen through the paper

I don’t own a lightbox for tracing so I made one using an upside down art easel, some leftover acrylic and a desk lamp! I used my makeshift lightbox for both redrawing the message and transferring my composited image onto the final card.

My Makeshift lightbox
My makeshift lightbox!
Traced and ready to ink
Traced and ready to ink!
The final product
The final product! The final text is a little wobbly because it was so small but that’s ok, it’s still readable ^_^

I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. My only concern was that the handle was too skinny and at risk of tearing. Luckily that never came to be. I’m also pretty chuffed I worked out a new way to trace through paper. It’s going make things a lot easier in the future ^_^.

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