DIY Mini Cards

DIY Mini Cards

A fun and easy new craft for this post: your own mini cards! Put whatever you want on them. These are a great way to save money and personalize your cards for any occasion.

What you'll need:

• A printer
• Cardstock Paper
• Paper cutter; I'm using my slide ruler cutter
• Scoring board (optional, but it sure is nice to have it)
• Corner rounder (optional also)

Step 1: Design your cards, or you can use my thank-you card here. If you want to design your own, here's some cut and score marks to work with for cards at 2.5" tall and 5" wide flat size, or front and back each 2.5" wide. Essentially, it's a square card when folded. Print your cards out at actual size; don't fit to page, because that will mess up the dimensions. For some reason, my printer cut off the crop marks on the left side but I'm just going to roll with it. I'm more concerned about having even numbers to work with for trimming.

Step 2: After printing, you can either cut your pages in half at the cut mark and score or directly score the whole pages. I cut mine in half before scoring.

On the printed sheet, along the top and bottom, should be 5 dashes. The longer dashes represent the cut marks and the shorter ones are the score marks. Or, if you have 5 dashes and count from left to right, dashes 2 and 4 are meant to indicate scoring. Because my far left dash didn't print, technically dashes 1 and 3 are my scoring indicators.

Scoring helps prevent the cardstock from cracking and looking ugly when it is folded. I put my paper with design down when I scored. A trick is to set it on the board with the design up and note the number the score mark corresponds to, then flip the paper UP (not over) so the same left side sits against the left ruler and score.

 

Step 3: The trimming is where it gets tricky. Take the half sheet and cut off the top (1), and then the bottom (2), using the crop mark. At this stage, the cards should be 7.5" tall total. Then rotate the cards and cut off the side that hasn't been cut yet at all (3), making the cards their final width of 5". Turn the cards back sideways and measure 2.5" to cut the cards to their final heights. Do this with all of the halves.

The final cut cards- how pretty!

Ah, mini cards make me happy.

Step 4 (optional): To add to the charm of these little cards, you can round their corners! Leave them flat and just punch each corner with the corner rounder.

Step 5: Fold your finished little cards, write in them, and hand them out! An adorable way to share beauty with those around you.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to leave comment with questions and even images of your own little cards!