Blog posted on: 18 May 2010, by tim

At diginate we often get asked if we produce business cards. We don't - there's plenty of companies out there who print great business cards. However, that doesn't mean that you can't make your own unique cards using our products.

I decided to produce some business cards to promote diginate's new facebook page. Unfortunately if you want to add specialist finishes to your cards most companies will demand that you order thousands, and charge you a fortune. I want mirror silver and a spot UV varnish, and I only need a handful of cards. Here's how I did it...

First off, I designed my card using Adobe Illustrator. I want my finished card to be 85mm x 55mm, and double sided. My artwork is set up to 90mm x 60mm to allow some space to trim the card, plus an extra 20mm at one end to allow you to line up the two sides.

Here's my artwork - the spot gloss layer is represented in green, and labelled "GLOSS" in the layers palette.

As you can see, the extra 20mm of space is on opposite ends of the artwork. This is crucial to aligning the prints.

Next up, I need my stickers. I'm using metallic silver stickers with spot gloss varnish. You could use any of our sticker types though (excluding self-cling and window varieties).

Here's my finished stickers...

I'm going to use the cardboard envelope that diginate stickers come in to form the rigid centre of my cards. You could use any type of card though (cereal boxes are good). First off I'm going to cut the flat sections from the envelope...

Next carefully smooth the sticker for one side of the business card onto the blank card...

Now carefully trim around the entire sticker using a craft knife and a metal ruler...

Here's my one-sided card, with excess sticker still intact...

Now carefully smooth the sticker for the reverse onto the other side of the card, starting at the end with the excess...

Once you've done this you can trim off the excess 2.5mm of bleed from the card using a sharp craft knife. Be really careful not to let the ruler slip or you'll ruin your card (and potentially your fingers). Since the card is quite thick it's best to cut through it with several sweeps of the blade.

Here's my finished card...

And the reverse...

The result is a card that not only looks great, but is nice and thick and feels great in the hand. If you've got a bit of time and crafty instincts this is a great way to produce short runs of really unique cards without huge expense. In addition to metallic finishes, our sparkly, gold metallic and matt stickers would look great. You could even have one finish on the front and a different finish on the reverse. Oh, and if you're considering a long run of cards with a specialist finish it's a cheap and easy way to prototype your design.