Business cards

For my upcoming event at Keller Williams on Oct. 15th I need business cards. The last time I personally ordered business cards for Art Prize in 2012 I ordered a LOT. I was in a venue that had not a lot of traffic and I came home with almost ALL of them.  Then a month later we had to change our phone number...............so the business cards were no longer valid. I decided to be more savy this time around.
There are of course many on line ways to create and order business cards for a moderate price. That is good if you plan on handing out a lot and if you have a more static logo to use. If  however, you are an artist you can feature your own art on your business card, and then you may want something more fluid.
I read about this in I'd Rather be in the Studio by Alyson B. Stanfield. It is an excellent resource for understanding,  planning and promoting (your) art. I borrowed her book through an inter library loan, but you can find it on ebay, Amazon .com etc .However, you will pay a tidy sum  for a used copy, because she is no longer printing her book. You can get her updated book in an instant download  for less on her site at  artbizcoach.com .
Sculpture John T. Unger is mentioned in Alyson's book . He keeps the text on his cards, but changes the images. When someone is interested in a particular work of his, he can hand them a card with that image and they can remember why they wanted it. Having several images on his cards gives him in his words "a mini-portfolio" of his more recent work. You can read more on his blog johntunger.com . After reading that about John,  it sunk into my head that he is the son-in -law of my very good writing and walking friend, Katherine ! No, I have never met him, but I love his work. So, I went into Libre office on my computer to make my business cards. After MANY hours and frustration I called a friend in the printing business who agreed to help me. I toted along my laptop and we set to work. After an hour we gave up. She uses a wonderfully easy program called Quark, which I do not have. I went on Youtube, my husband's favorite site for help with repairs of any nature,and found a tutorial. Eureka! I was able to make a business card-going  from Libre office to Youtube and back several times. It took the tutor only 18 minutes-it took me much, much longer. And the really sad part? The tutor was explaining the process in his third language-English.....It turns out though, that he could not get the "business card"option to work under Libre office so he created the business card under the "labels" option instead.
The moral is, if you don't know what you're doing and you don't want to spend days in frustration, see if there is a Youtube tutorial. Some viewers commented that the tutorial I used  was boring, but for those of us almost computer illiterate it was just what I needed.
Once your card is designed, you have some other decisions. Will the card stock  work on your printer ? Do you have enough ink ? Can you cut them so they look professional? Of course you can make them any size, but a standard size will make more recipients happy.   I found out my local printing company will print them on their printer quite cheaply ( about 60cents /sheet and 10 cards  per sheet depending on the card stock and number of colors) All I have to do is email or take in a PDF file. And I can pay $4.50 to have the sheets  cut on their big professional cutting machine.  It sounds like a deal, and I will be supporting a local business.
If you stop by at Keller Willaims at Rivertown Crossing in Grandville on Oct.15th,  you  can view my paintings and get  my business card with an image of one of my paintings.