DIY business cards . . .

I just love making friends in the blog world.....one of my virtual friends is Mindy from a {day} with lil mama stuart.  We started our blogs about the same time and I have enjoyed all of her wonderful ideas!


When I put out a plea for help because of the craziness of this past month, Mindy responded right away and this idea is AWESOME!!

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Since I got ready for BlogHer in a few days notice, I had to whip up some business cards in no time! Here’s my no design background whatsoever way of designing your own business cards using picnik.com (a free photo editing website).

1.  Upload a background. Sprik Space has an amazing series of free patterns, in 20 colors! The project possibilities with these are endless!

2. Roughly crop your photo to a rectangle shape. Then resize it to 1050x600 (unclick the "keep proportions" box) for a 3.5x2 business card. The proportions of the pattern might get skewed, so keep undoing and play around with the cropping and resizing until your pattern looks right.

3.  Add text boxes with your pertinent information (name, email, website, twitter handle, Facebook page, phone number and address if you aren’t creeped out by that, etc). Change the colors and sizes and rearrange to your liking. TIP: Always note the numbers of your colors. It's easy to match later on if you mess up or recreate your file.

4. I added clip art from their selection of stickers (I do not have a premium account). Right click to rotate, flip, resize and reposition as you please. Adjust colors and sizes. TIP: Don’t make a border around your card. The cutting process is not precise, so it’s easier to just not have one.

5. Save your file.

6. Open a word doc. Insert your business card file. Double click or right click to resize to 3.5x2 (uncheck "lock aspect ratio" box). Adjust your page margins to be .5 all around. Copy and paste 9 more, so you have 10 on a page.

If you want a double sided business card, repeat all steps.

After doing a few test prints, I brought a jump drive with the two files (one for front and one for back) to Office Depot for printing (I’d do the cutting myself). It cost me $25 to print 200 business cards (20 sheets) double sided on glossy paper.  Then it was just me, 20 sheets, and my paper cutter in my closet floor for two late nights. Turns out I only dished out 60 cards in my 2.5 days at BlogHer’11. Should I hand the other 100+ out to every parent I see at the park??

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Wasn't that a great DIY idea!!  (And Mindy just takes incredible pictures!)  

Mindy offers a part 2 to this tutorial....

....would you believe that she made her business card holder out of duct tape?!?

For a complete tutorial, head over to a {day} with lil mama stuart!