DIY Business Cards

Have you ever been in a bind and needed business cards real quick. Like tomorrow! Well I'm here to share the secret to professional DIY business cards. 

First, get good paper. I ONLY use Royal Sundance Felt or Crane & Co. Lettra Paper (I always keep these on hand, especially since you usually have to order them online). Get the good heavy stuff. Preferably 80lb Cover or 110lb Cover. We all know flimsy business cards look cheap!

Now, create your design in Word or whatever other program you feel comfortable in. I use Adobe Illustrator, but only because I know that program better than Word. Once you've got your design done, layout your cards so you fit 10 cards to one 8 1/2 x 11 page. Line them up so they touch.

The picture below shows the cut marks so you know how to line them up. DO NOT print cut marks on all your pages. Just one page so you'll know where to cut when you are done. Trust me on this one! You'll see why at the end. 

Now, remember how I said we want nice THICK cards. Well 110lb isn't thick enough. Sorry! Go grab two more sheets of your nice heavy paper.

Now get your can of spray glue and glue the three pieces of paper together. Yes, I said three! Feel how nice and thick it is now!!!

TIP: The top and bottom need to be the same paper, but the middle can be anything you want. I chose a gray cover weight paper from Office Depot. The paper is nothing fancy, but it gives you a little color on your card edges once they have been cut.

Now you are wondering how you are going to cut through three pieces of paper. Well, you're not. You are going to put your one sheet of paper that has the cut marks on the top of your stack of printed cards and march right down to Alphagraphics or Kinkos. They will cut your cards for $1 per cut, so it will cost you $9. And they will cut through an entire stack of paper perfectly.

So don't listen to all the other DIY-ers on Pinterest. No matter how hard you try, you will never cut it as perfect as a machine and trust me it's not worth your time. You are worth more than $9!