Artist trading cards/crafty business cards

When I was making this website and designing the survey, I kept trying to think of ways to make a crafty connection to people. I wanted to give them something tangible, like a business card, that was also crafty. I also happened to have a ton of scraps left over from a quilt project, some place mat making, and my good old addiction to Jo-Ann’s. So, I decided to sew up scrappy business cards. I’ll be giving them out at the Portsmouth Open Market this Sunday. Can’t wait!

Here’s how I made them:

First, gather your scraps of fabric. I like to use a mix of different textures: corduroy, calico, denim, linen…

Then, dig up some InterFuse, which is thick, double-sided interfacing. You could also use plain fusible interfacing and glue it to both sides of a piece of thin cardboard. Find some plain fabric for the back, where your information will go.

Turn over the solid fabric so that the right side is touching your work surface. Lay the InterFuse on top (both sides are fusible). Then, lay out a fabric collage on top of the interfacing, making sure that all of the fusible stuff gets covered up with your scraps. Overlap the scrap edges by at least a quarter inch.

 

Iron the fabric-interfacing-fabric sandwich together on both sides.

You now have business card material. Scrappy business cardstock, if you will.

Next, hop on over to Design*Sponge’s sweet tutorial on how to put your information on everything using a customize-able stamp. I bought a stamp and stamp pad at Staples for around $25, and I plan to use it over and over and over…

Stamp the solid fabric side with your info, spaced about 1/2-3/4 of an inch apart. You could try different colors, but I just used plain black.

Up close:

While you’ve got the stamp out, stamp your/your blog/your company’s name on a few more scraps of plain, solid fabric. I stamped a tagline.

To decorate your cards and keep all those little fabric scraps together, sew back and forth around the printed side on your sewing machine.

Ta-da!

Finally, use a rotary cutter to slice the cards apart.

Repeat for the tagline/short title stamped fabric. Glue the taglines to the scrappy side of each card.

Fin!

 

I made these when I was taking a survey of 500 craft bloggers… you can read the results here.  If you’d like to get updates about my other projects (like a guide to running your own DIY writing retreat!), please sign up here.