Making your own business cards allows you to completely customize them towards your personal career path. Graphic designers have long known how a well-designed business card features their particular skills, but custom handmade business cards could also highlight the skills of a variety of indie crafters and artists–think handmade paper, scrapbooking details, custom stamp work, or decorative stitching. These sewn business cards, which utilize two layers of scrap fabric, a recycled paper base, and your complete business information, are a little more work than your ordinary business card, but they’re beautiful, eco-friendly, quite thrifty, and they’ll certainly stand out in a crowd. Here’s how to make them:
Like the stitched recycled paper business cards, you’ll need to gather together a few layers of materials for your cards: Cut all the layers to size, using an existing business card as a template. Cut accurately, since many people own business card holders that won’t work for cards of non-standard sizes. For extra interest, you can cut your fabric using pinking shears. I like to stamp or print my business information onto the blank paper before cutting it, then trim it down until it just contains the information–that way the backing fabric works as a nice border to the business information. To sew the card together, first use a glue stick to adhere the backing fabric to the cardstock middle, then also glue the paper with the business card information in its place on the back of the card. Using a sharp, sturdy needle in your sewing machine, just sew the paper with the business card information onto the card, which will also, of course, stitch that backing fabric to the card in that spot. Next, remove the card from your sewing machine, and glue the front fabric to the card using a glue stick. Using any stitch that you like, sew around the perimeter of the card to attach all the layers. The stitching that you used to attach the business card information will be covered on its back side, which gives the business card a cleaner look. While you likely will not want to go to the trouble to make enough of these business cards to hand out to every single person, it’s nice to have a stash of extra-special business cards at the ready to give out when you want to make a great first impression.
