Stepping on legos is the worst. Making neon paper legos, however, is the best! If you have time to try something new (while watching Netflix, etc.), this is the card for you.
When Liz’s son asked her to make a card for one of his friends’ birthday, this idea popped up. Kids love legos. Why not make a homemade card inspired by the famous bricks? Sure, you can make red, yellow, green, and blue bricks. But neon colors look waayyyy cool. Plus we had some leftover neon paper scraps that needed to be used.
To start, gather neon or brightly-colored high-contrast paper and cut it into 1-3 inch rectangular strips.
A tool is just a tool. The key is knowing how to use it wisely and in different ways. Here, in lieu of just cutting out the strips with scissors, we used our We R Memory Keepers Alphabet Punch Board to cut small, even sized strips of paper. It worked (and we are really trying to maximize the use of this punch board!)
Be sure to cut small 2 x 3 inch rectangle (give or take) and cut it into several strips horizontally or vertically. In fact, do both. Make them in varying sizes for interest and diversity as legos come in different sizes. Also, it doesn’t have to be perfectly straight. You will be spacing them out on the card. So just have fun and do your best.
Next, comes the work of putting together the Legos. This card is not entirely a fast project (You’re watching a movie in the background, remember?).
Grab a hole puncher (single, three hole punch, etc.) and cut out two types of paper dots:
- First, hole punch as many neon dots as you can for each color you are using. These paper dots will be the tops of our lego blocks. So punch a lot of dots.
- Optionally, add dimension to the lego bricks by adding some shading. Dig into your scrapbooking paper or use scraps for this. Find a gray color or a duller color which is similar to your neon colors. For instance, if you are using neon orange, chose a duller color of orange (in this case, we used orange construction paper). When using these two tones of color together (bright and duller), the duller color starts to look gray helping us achieve a type of shading to add dimension to our Lego piece.
Now that you have your dots, glue the duller looking dots to the strips of neon paper. Try to lay the circles equidistant from each other. If you have a tool to help pick up and arrange the tiny paper dots, now is the time to use it. Tip: we used crafting toothpicks to help pick these tiny dots up. You could dip it in candle wax and let it cool down. Sometimes you just have to find a quick hack. Here, we attached a rubber encasing—the kind that protects new gel pens but must be removed upon use. Has anyone done this?! We are proud of this hack because it works.
After you are done gluing the first layer of duller-colored dots, start gluing the neon color dots slightly off center. Do not glue directly on top. Glue slightly off-center to create a shadow effect. Doing it this way makes the Legos more three dimensional.
When you are done doing this, arrange the blocks on your card. When you’ve settled on a design. Glue it all down.
Add a birthday sentiment on top.
Use any unused Lego bricks and attach it to the card or add it inside to surprise its reader.
Here’s the final result! (Your Netflix movie is over hopefully).
Sometimes you get inspired by something around you and you end up making a card to satisfy your vision (despite doing it the long way!)
And that’s it! This Lego card is one bright card! What is the brightest, loudest, and most colorful birthday card you’ve ever made?
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