You get birthday tickets on your birthday, whatever day you told PSN your birthday was is when you will get it, and obviously the year in which you were born. So if you were born in 1984 you will get a 1984 birthday ticket on your birthday.
Level tickets are received when you complete whole series in GT5, like Expert Series or Extreme, A-Spec and B-Spec. However in an earlier seasonal involving a Lotus Elise race, Fiat 500 race and Subaru Impreza race you also received level 21,22 and 23 tickets for winning those three seasonals.
Hope this helped.
