Another in my series of bridge cards is this Train Birthday Bridge Card. Perfect for all the little train fanatics on their special day! If you need a card that is more feminine, there is a princess bridge card here. Cordelia is trying to make me more gender sensitive, so I won’t call them girl or boy cards.
This card needs to be folded special to fit in an envelope, but I will show you that in a minute. It does fit in an A9 envelope or you can make your own with this tutorial. This card uses an image from the cartridge Paper Dolls for Everyday which is not an Access image. To make this project for free, use the SVG file.
You will need:
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- Heavy cardstock for the base
- Various Cardstock scraps
- Glue
- Download File
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Paper Selection
I chose to make this Train Birthday Bridge Card in blue and found this wonderful polka dot paper for the overlays. I tried to make all the cars a different color combination and used those colors in the engineer’s outfit. Use whatever colors you like. Nothing needs to be two sided.
Cutting the Princess Birthday Bridge Card
The writing is cut out and glued to the tracks, so you do not need to use a pen.
The Design Space file has all the cut lines in the engineer outfit but I took them out of the SVG file. It still looks great.
There are lots of little pieces, especially for the engineer, so be sure to keep track of them while cutting the whole card out. And lots of the pieces are thin, so be careful when removing them from the mat.
Assembling the Princess Birthday Bridge Card
This one is real easy to make. Start by re-creasing the fold line.
Next you need to assemble all the embellishments. The engineer is assembled from the body up by this diagram.
The others are two layers and sorta obvious. Now attach the embellishments (except the tracks) to the overlays and attach the overlays to the card. Make sure you attach the embellishments high enough so that the tracks won’t cover them. The tracks are ONLY attached to the far right segment so that it stretches across the card when open. Look at the first picture above to see how it becomes the bridge.
And your Train Birthday Bridge Card is done! See wasn’t that easy? It fits into an A9 envelope for mailing like the picture below. Whether you make your own envelope or not, it is folded the same way.
Fun Facts About Trains
- A locomotive engine can be powered by steam, diesel or electricity.
- America’s first steam locomotive lost a race to a horse.
- Trains helped the North win the American Civil War.
- The railroads also gave us standardized time zones.
- In 2017, the entire worldwide rail transportation network had over 851,000 miles of railroad tracks. The United States of America had over 125,000 miles of railroad tracks.
- The fastest commercial electric-powered locomotive in the world is the Shanghai Maglev train with a top speed of 268 miles per hour.