I do love a good challenge, and each year the card for my brother in law’s birthday gets me. After all the Christmas crafting I’m always totally unprepared (and distinctly lacking in creativity) when it comes to January birthdays. He is a computer programmer, and I’ve seen a few designs where you paper piece a computer screen etc. I like the idea, but I really couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for it. Then a light bulb came on (ok, maybe just a small spark). I could write the message in binary code! Simple, effective, and only he (and his colleagues) would ‘get’ it.
This opened up a whole can of worms, how on earth do you translate into binary code? I mean, there’s language translators for French and so on, but who really reads computer language? (Apart from computer whizzes!) A quick Google search found me a translator, and I typed in my message, which I duly copied and pasted into a text box which I had already made to the size I wanted to print. At that point, paranoia struck. What if the translator was wrong? I copied and pasted my billions of numbers back into another translator to reverse the process, then checked again. How embarrassing would it be to send the wrong letters? And it hadn’t even occurred to me that capital H in binary would have a different code to lower case. Once I was satisfied that I wasn’t writing gobbledegook, I changed the font, printed it, trimmed and matted onto silver mirror card and some black and grey spotty paper from the Docrafts MrMister range. A super quick card, once I’d worked out the message. It’s not fancy, but it is special.
The possibilities for this are quite literally endless, you can write any message (even more ‘colourful’ language). A secret message between you and the recipient, a hilarious joke, anything you fancy! Mr C tried to encourage me to add a sweary message at the bottom but I had already made it (and I didn’t want to risk accidentally translating anything else wrong!) Here is a link to the Binary Code translator I used, in case you fancy trying this out for yourself.
The card has been opened and received so I can finally post it here, it went down very well (and the recipient was in agreement with Mr C that it needed some rude words!)
Great idea and totally inventive!
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Thank you 😊
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Haha! Brilliant!
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Thank you! 😊
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you never fail to impress me!
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Thank you, what a lovely comment 😊
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Ooh, very clever! Well executed, too, like usual. 😊
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Haha, thanks, best not to look too closely! 😉
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Nice! I think it is always appreciated when you go out of your way to make something unique to the recipient 🙂
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Thank you, it usually is! I love it when something I’ve made makes someone else happy. 😊
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Excellent idea 🙂
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Thank you 😊
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Fab Idea. Sweary words 🙂 These boys never grow up.
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Tell me about it! 😂
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Absolute genius! I have said this to you before, but I think these are the best kind of cards – truly personal ones. Actually in my experience I think men really appreciate them too. Either the humour, or because someone took time to do it, or the originality, maybe. Anyway, I LOVE it!
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Thank you! It went down very well 😊
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Genius!!
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Thank you! 😊
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Ha ha what a great idea! My partner is a computer whiz too, so he would like this! His birthday, too, is in january so i really need to get a shifty on!
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Thank you! These January birthdays are pretty awkward!
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What a fun idea! I love it
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Thank you, he loved it. 😊
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I love flashes of inspiration like this, 01001101 01110010 01110011 01000011 01110010 01100001 01100110 01110100 00001010, but I get exactly the same feelings as you when using any kind of translator! 😀
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Haha, thank you, had to put that into the translator! 🙂
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I had to put it into two translators just to be sure! 😀
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This is great , I can think of someone who would love this , luckily have a few weeks until his birthday , so plenty of time to check the translation- thank you for sharing .
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Glad you like it, it’s so simple but fun! 😊
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Is right up my street on both counts !
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