Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Tutorial: Unique Business Cards

For me, one of the most exciting parts of starting a business is deciding what kind of business cards to get. I knew from the beginning that I was going to get them printed on kraft paper, with pink ink. This was part of the reason it took me so long to get them done- no one seemed to be able to print business cards on kraft! I finally found an album from Checkerboard, at work, that was able to do this! 
I had all these plans to do my own logo but eventually decided just to use text & got them thermography printed. They turned out just like I imagined & didn't cost a fortune. This brings me to the tutorial:

If you plan on making tags, like I did, ask the company to leave a little space on the side blank (I did 3/4"). Make sure to get a proof because nothing is worse than opening a box of business cards to find out they misspelled your name or copied down your phone number wrong!
I decided to make my business cards into tags, because my business is papercrafts so I thought the card would kind of speak for itself. I'm sure there are places where you can order cards already shaped like this & assembled, but this was definitely cheaper! I used Pink Sorbet bakers twine from The Twinery (by the way, if you place an order through March 27, they will donate 25% of all their sales to help Japan!) for my cards, but you can also use ribbon, yarn, scraps of cloth or whatever else you can think of!

A business card should not only tell people what you do, but show them, if possible, especially for those people who own creative businesses. If you sew, why not run the card through a sewing machine or add a couple of stitches by hand? If you design clothes, add a bit of your material to the card. Knit? Tie some yarn to the cards! Make jewelry? Print a picture of a face on your cards & add some "bling stickers" (I'm blanking on the actual name of these...will change this once I remember!) to the ears or necklace. If you're a writer, get cards that open up like a book, etc. So many possibilities!

For more inspiration, check out Lovely Stationery. They have tons of beautiful & creative business cards shown, though many look as though they cost a fortune! (I'd love to get letterpress business cards, but they're a little too out of my price range at the moment!) Please link up your cards here; I'd love to see!

{*All resources used are from the lovely Katrina!}

 (ETA: I hope you all can see the text in the pictures...I'm super new to using Photoshop, templates & all that so I'm not sure how to make the pictures bigger. I added the pictures through Blogger's picture uploader.)

3 comments:

The Twinery said...

Such a great way to make your business cards stand out! Thank you so much for using our baker's twine as well!!

I don't know if you've ever seen this, but I a corner paper punch that create easy "Tag-like" corners:

We R Memory Keepers: http://www.amazon.com/Crop-Dile-Corner-Chomper-Angle/dp/B002RG6M66/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1300978555&sr=8-5

Hope that helps!! FABULOUS Business cards!

Keshet said...

They're adorable!

Waseem said...

it's a great way to make the business cards stand out..I think same can be use for Metal business cards.