Making Sketch Cards!!

Sketch cards are fairly expensive when you consider the amount you get for the money. I recently thought I'd found a great deal from etsy.com and orders 50 cards for $4. Turns out, they were just cheap, thin & flimsy card stock. So, I devised my own method of making good quality sketch cards. You will need a few things.

1. Poster or Bristol board
2. Razor knife and/or paper cutter
3. Printer
4. Sketch Card template found HERE

And please visit:
http://comicbookgraphicdesign.com/category/free-comic-book-resources/
For more nice design templates and useful tools.

So let's begin!

First you have to prep the board you are going to use. If you are using Bristol board that is 11"X17", just cut it in half to make an 8 1/2"X 11" sheet that you can feed through the printer.

I personally am using a nice grade of poster board for mine. Not all poster board paper is suitable though. I tried many different kinds of poster paper in my quest to find something similar but less expensive than Bristol. I discovered the white poster board carried at "Dollar Tree" stores is the best around for laying down inks, pencil & marker without spending the extra cash for Bristol board. Using a razor knife, you can cut out three 11X17 boards from one .50 cent sheet. On my resources page you will find the template I use for printing my own comic boards but let's carry on with the sketch cards! If you are using the poster board and have already cut it to 11X17, just cut it in half just as you would the Bristol.

Now, one to the printing. You will need to get the above mentioned template. You can use a photo editing program to alter it if you like but for our purposes, we will just leave it alone.

Here  is the Template we are using in a hi-resolution PDF file. I have no idea why uploading to this blog darkens the white of the template sheet so please download from the provided link. You an extract the image from the PDF file with Photoshop or other software.

If you prefer blanks:

Ok, now the fun stuff!

This part is easy. Just take your pre-prepped 81/2"X11" Bristol or Poster board and load into the print tray of your printer. Using the Windows Photo Viewer, click "pint" and make sure you have "Fit to picture frame" checked. This is important because we want them to print at trading card size.

Also, if you are using poster board as I am here. Remember to load the printer with the shiny side up so that it will print on the rougher side.

Note: If Printing from PDF file directly, UNCHECK "Fit to page"

Lastly, it's time to cut out the cards. Again SIMPLE!

Using a razor knife (or preferably a paper cuter), follow the dotted cut lines. 

There you have it! 

You should now have something that looks like this:

Keep in mind, if you are using poster board as I have here, you can get 54 cards from one board for roughly 30 cents by the time you count the ink!

Here's a sample finished card.