Business-Blogger-Calling-Cards

I never claimed to be especially crafty. I have the most respect for artists, craftsters, creators who can make amazing, tangible things thought up completely originally (or even duplicate, for that matter). I adore it all, but I’m not all that artsy-crafty, mostly, I’ve self-diagnosed, because I lack pure patience to concept and create something original and meticulous. Most of my craftier projects are… scrappy.

So remember that when I show you one of my latest projects: Business cards. Blogger-calling-cards. Business-Blogger-Calling-Cards. Something like that. I frequently stumble over descriptors and I also make up lots of words as I go.

Before I get to the cards themselves, Pete designed me this…

…which I then produced as a rubber stamp for a sweet $22 (included taxes and shipping, but also a discount for 20% at the time of ordering from thestampmaker.com). It is designed to fit on a traditional sized business card, which maybe I’ll have produced formally someday.

Imagine a little beam of happy sunshine glowing down on my new stamp. It worked wonderfully.

I was a feeling inspired to be prepared for the Buffalo Home + Garden Show, which I recapped over here. It was one of the first opportunities I had to present myself not solely as “Emily” or “a homeowner” or even “Emily who works in advertising”, but “Emily, a Rochester-based blogger.” Coolness + nervousness. Part of my prep included creating these businessy/calling cards, thinking that I could leave an impression with new contacts at the show. I only handed out about 3 of them, which is just fine with me for a start, but obviously not as many as I planned leave behind. I need to get better at striking up conversations with the sales people; my instincts are working against me, since I’ve spent 99% of my life working strategically to avoid crossing paths with schmoozers.

So I proceeded with buying up a few ink pads at the craft store with some 50% off coupons I had. Let’s just say I haven’t shopped for ink pads… ever… or maybe not since I was 4 and received a seriously awesome owl stamp from my dad.

I sprung for a plain black, a dark purple, and a embossing pad with some pretty purple embossing powder (which yes, had already been used and stained purple by the time I photographed it, below). I had seen my mom do the embossing thing once or twice on our family’s Christmas cards, but I had never tried the technique myself before now.

For paper, I browsed the stock options at the craft stores, but turned them all down. I decided for this first go-around that I’d try as cheap as possible (clearly tapping into “future me” and realizing that I’d only be brave enough to hand out oh, I don’t know, 3 cards, zing). I tapped into a piece of plain white paper and a piece of cardboard, both of which I hacked apart with a razor blade to work with scraps slightly larger than the standard 2″x3″ business card. I began stamping and embossing and happily both the cardboard and the plain paper worked well; it was easy, thankfully. The only issue was that the lettering on the stamps was pretty fine, so when the powder melted and raised, they merged and melded together and the URL/text isn’t quite as readable as it should be. Thankfully the logo itself was legible while embossed.

I glued some of the paper on to the cardboard pieces for a layered, even more DIY effect, and was pretty happy with the outcome. Some of the pieces are just plain cardboard still. The DIY is the whole thing I’m endorsing, after all.

Oh, and I included my email on the back of each card too. Handwritten with a fine Sharpie. On the stamps with less clarity, I also stamped a clean ink-only impression for readability.

I think they turned out pretty nice. Slash shabby. Slash totally DIY’ed. And more importantly, once I start really handing them out I think they’ll get a second look.