Doodle Dog Creative is a creative agency headquartered in Dallas and Austin, Texas, specializing in branding solutions, website design and development and search engine optimization. We create smile worthy concepts that capture personality and inspire brands.
DIY (Gold Foil) Painted Edge Business Card
I’ve always loved the look of nice thick matte cards with shiny painted edging. It adds a touch of luxury and quality to a simple clean design. When I ordered my new business cards, they were great – nice thick paper, a perfect matte material and very sturdy – but they were missing something, and I kept thinking I wish I would have gotten the edges painted by the printer. So I decided, what the heck – I’ll try to do it myself. This was such a great decision – and I have to say I’ll continue to do it by myself from here on out. It was very easy – took about 10 minutes to do – and then just had to wait for them to dry and start using.
So, I wanted to share with you all, step-by-step, how I did this. I stacked the cards about 50 or so per bunch, and made sure my stacks were perfect (not a single card out of place) and then added a weight to the top card to make sure the cards were all smashed down nicely and no paint would bleed through between cards. Once my cards were in the perfect stack, I took a sponge paintbrush – dipped it in a small amount of the metallic paint (the product I used is listed below) and brushed on a thick but very smooth layer to all four edges. The key here is making sure there are no globs or bubbles.
The one thing I would do differently while painting is put a piece of wax paper or even just another throw away card on the top and bottom of the stack – as those two cards did get ruined while I was working.
Once dry – be prepared for your jaw to drop. My simple (and pretty affordable) thick stock cards – transformed into a super luxurious looking (bad ass) card. The gold foil edges turned out perfectly.
Since it was my first attempt at doing this on my own, I really wanted to try two different metallics. I did about half with the metallic gold – which turned out to be the perfect accent to the all white and grey cards, as it was bright enough to really set them apart, and the other half with a metallic light blue to tie into our brand colors. Both looked great – but I did feel like I favored the gold. The finished product! (Tip: Let them dry completely before moving them. When they are 100% dry try to shuffle the stack of cards and they will all break apart easily – try not to bend the cards when shuffling.)Supplies:
sponge paintbrush
gold metallic paint (or any color metallic that you’d like to use)
Total Costs: About $4 (plus the cost of cards)
Enjoy some DIY – and if you try it be sure to share your images with us – so we can see how it went! (you can tag us in your instagram posts if you want to share @doodledoginsta)