Business cards can be expensive and if you’re new to blogging or aren’t making any money from it yet, you probably don’t want to spend a lot of money. You can save a lot by designing your own business cards in PicMonkey!

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while is getting my own business cards. Nice ones are expensive, though, right? Right.

I’m not a graphic designer by profession or…even by experience. But it’s a hobby I’ve had since I was a teenager. I’ve love to buy my own business cards, but until my blog starts making significant money (as of this month, I’ve made enough to pay my blogging fees, but not much more than that), I’ll just have to make them.

I actually did this in two ways. Today I’m going to show you how to make a nice business card in PicMonkey. Tomorrow I’ll show you how I made them in Gimp. (Tomorrow’s are the ones I actually intend to print.) I actually prefer Gimp because it gives you more control over the quality of the final printed product, as well as more design options. But PicMonkey is so much easier to use and doesn’t require any downloading, which is why we’re starting with that.

Edit: I made new business cards using this technique. I posted them on Instagram. You can check out the front here and the back here. They’re not perfect, but they did the job–I threw them together about 2 hours before an event when I realized I had no cards. 

How to Design Your Own Business Cards in PicMonkey

Step 01: Open PicMonkey and click “Design.” If it lets you choose the dimensions, type in “252” for the height and “144” for the width.

Step 02: Go to “Overlays” (it’s the one that looks like a butterfly) and pick a shape. I chose a label and used the color #9ed6bb.

Step 03: Choose a font and add text to your label. Since the card I’m making is for ChelseyHartman.net (which no longer exists, FYI), I chose “CH.” The font I used was called “Learning Curve” and I used white text (#ffffff).

EDIT: Now that PicMonkey lets you use your own fonts, I no longer use Learning Curve. 😛 Want some awesome FREE fonts? Check out DaFont! I’ve been using it for YEARS and I love it!

Step 04: Add descriptive text–your name, your profession (obviously if you’re at a blogging conference you don’t need this, but you could say what kind of blogger you are). The fonts I used were Amatic Small Caps and Rokkit (I think). The color was #918986.

Step 05: Now the middle is empty! You can use this for whatever you want. Most people use social media accounts (their big ones–usually Twitter and Facebook). I chose to include keywords to describe my blog(s). I may change this to social media, though. I haven’t decided. Again, the color I used was #918986.

If you’re not a blogger (or you are) and you run your own business, you probably want to include your business number and address instead.

Step 06: It’s missing something, though. So I added some little dots between each keyword. (I used another shape overlay for this.) I changed the shape color to #9ed6bb to match my original overlay.

Step 07: For one more touch, I chose a font and typed out opening and closing parentheses. I used the color #9ed6bb for those, as well. I can’t remember what font I used, but go ahead and play around until you find one you like.

Step 08: Save this. You can stop here if you want, but I really like the look of cards with a front and a back. So after you save this document, open a new one. The dimensions of your new one will be the same, but opposite: 144 for the height and 252 for the width. Insert a nice background by going to the icon that’s shaped like a diamond. You can use one of theirs or one of your own. I used a nice polka dot one.

Step 09: That mint overlay I made for the last card? We’re doing that again, but in white (#ffffff).

Step 10: Insert text, just like with the last one. I used Learning Curve. Again, I used “CH” for the label. I also inserted the URL in Amatic Small Caps. For both, I used #918986 for the color.

And you’re done! Save this. You can then insert them into Microsoft Word (or something similar) on different pages and then set your printer to print front and back. I’m actually having trouble getting mine to line up properly, so I’ll update with that when I figure it out. (I got my printer to do it once and I can’t remember how!)

You can also just take both image files to your local printing shop and ask them to print it a specific way.

For now, though, you have a nice business card! It’s even nicer if you use Gimp, so as I said, we’ll do that tomorrow. 🙂 Also, I’ll show you my finished product.

I would LOVE to see what you design! Go to my Facebook page and post a link to your cards on my wall to show them off!