Josh Fitz, one of the guys I met at that Exquisite Corpse event I mentioned in my last post, had these small blank pieces of bristol board that he was drawing little pictures on, writing down his email address, and handing them out to people as unique business cards. They were a little too wide to fit into a wallet, but I liked the concept so today I got a pack of blank business cards designed for a laser printer. I plan to do a bunch of them in advance and keep them in my bag in case I meet an artist somewhere. I'll post them here too, and if I get tired of making new ones I can rehash some of my favorites for printing. The ones without any text are on the backs of the ones next to them.
The cards I got are, of course, designed to be used in a laser printer, so I am experimenting with the different pens in my collection to see which one works best. The one with the grin was in an ink that didn't soak into the card, just pooled on the surface. After accidentally smudging it a little, I said what the heck and just went crazy -- to a pretty ok effect, although I doubt it'll hold up in someone's wallet. The bottom one, meanwhile, was in an ink that managed to bleed through to the other side of the card, so I just made the other side a mirror image except for the text. Luckily, Sharpies seem to do just fine -- so that's probably what I'll stick with for the rest. In the end, though, I'm going to want to get some actual bristol and cut it down to size rather than work around the limitations of this stuff.
The cards I got are, of course, designed to be used in a laser printer, so I am experimenting with the different pens in my collection to see which one works best. The one with the grin was in an ink that didn't soak into the card, just pooled on the surface. After accidentally smudging it a little, I said what the heck and just went crazy -- to a pretty ok effect, although I doubt it'll hold up in someone's wallet. The bottom one, meanwhile, was in an ink that managed to bleed through to the other side of the card, so I just made the other side a mirror image except for the text. Luckily, Sharpies seem to do just fine -- so that's probably what I'll stick with for the rest. In the end, though, I'm going to want to get some actual bristol and cut it down to size rather than work around the limitations of this stuff.