I ran out of personal business cards a while back and never got off my duff to order more. With more than a few conferences/industry shindigs and the like on the horizon panic sets in and a weekend project is born.
Gather supplies
I went with paper from French Paper and wooden veneer from Cards of Wood
Playing around with the printer
My original plan was to go with white offset printing for the cards, but time constraints made this a little tricky. I decided to throw a couple sheets through my ink jet printer to get me through the coming weeks, but liked the outcome so much I think I’m going to pass on the white ink altogether.
Construction
The veneer I picked up came with adhesive already on the back, so once everything was printed out and dried, I just had to stick them together. Once they were all assembled, I rolled the couple air bubbles out and stack them together with some weight on top to let everything get good and stuck.
The final bits
Since I am not in possession of die cutting gear or even a proper paper cutter I went manual on the final sheets. After taping down the edges so things stayed put fairly well, I just went to town with a rotary knife.
All told it cost me about $80 for enough material to make ~160 wood-backed cards and 600 additional paper only cards (not counting the cost of ink). I banged out 6 sheets in about two hours, but now that I have the rhythm down, I bet I could cut that time in half. They look really nice in person, the veneer has a light sheen to it that the photos don’t really do justice.
4 Comments
Those cards look great! Even more amazing is the fact that you used an inkjet printer at home. I’m hesitant to pass anything but paper through my Canon.
Thanks. The cardstock I ended up using was 80# cover paper which is a good deal thicker than regular paper, but only about half the thickness of regular business card. I figured I would make up the additional bulk once I added the wooden backer.
My printer would misfeed and “jam” on every other sheet, but hitting Ok to clear the page worked fine with no ill effects.
Brilliant. I always love it when designers take the initiative to save money and do identity work themselves. That’s how I have been doing it for the past three years, and I have yet to go back to a professional printer.
Thanks! I’m far from a designer though. One of the big unspoken reasons I went down the route I did with the cards was so I could take a really simple idea and through materials come up with something nice without needing really strong design chops.
I’ve since written a couple scripts that let me generate sheets of cards with those elements, but randomly placed via code. That lets me do completely one of a kind cards without much additional effort.
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