Cricut Project: Business Card Holder

This is the edited and completed version of the project I started at this year's Trenton Computer Festival (TCF). It is available on my Cricut Profile Page.

The instructions there are a bit terse, having to fit inside 500 characters. Here's a more complete version:

Supplies:

• 2 sheets 110-lb cardstock, such as Recollections Heavyweight Cardstock Paper from Michaels 
• Adhesives of choice. I used Glue Dots and a tape runner
• Color printer (optional)

Preparation:

• Print an allover design on cardstock (optional)
  
• In Design Space, set all text to "not visible" (or just ignore the black mat)
  

Settings:

1. Set your materials setting to "Poster Board" or "Poster Board +"
   
2. If you have a Cricut Maker, use the Double Scoring Wheel.
3. Cut "pretty side down" if appropriate (not what I did).
   
4. Set your material size to 11" x 8.5" (letter)

Make the Project:

1. Cut and weed both mats. You will have three pieces ("Stand", "Holder", and "Front")
   
2. Take the "Stand" piece and fold all score lines to the back.
   
3. Secure the top corners to the folded back top of the stand using Glue Dots.
   
4. Hold the "Holder" piece so the three parallel score lines are towards the bottom. Fold the upper two score lines to the front; fold the lowest score line to the back.
   
5. Use a tape runner on the plain side of the bottom of the holder to secure it to its adjacent section.
   
6. Holding the "Front" with printed side facing you, fold all score lines to front at 90 degrees. 
   
7. Turn the piece so you are looking at the unprinted side.
8. Using a tape runner or Glue Dots, secure the "Holder" piece to the "Front", matching up the large rectangle and the folded-up ledge beneath it.
9. Fold the side fronts over the "Holder", and use Glue Dots to secure the corner flaps to the bottom ledge. 
   
10. Using Glue Dots, secure the two long tabs to the bottom ledge.
    
11. Using the tape runner, Secure the front/holder piece to the "stand", matching large flat rectangles.
    

Finishing

Add business cards and set on table.

Note: if you prefer your cardholder to slant rather than stand upright, align the "Stand" with the top of the "Holder" rather than the bottom.

Cricut: Demonstration at Trenton Computer Festival

I spent Saturday at the Trenton Computer Festival (TCF), the longest-running amateur computer show in the United States. (Disclosure: I am Secretary of the Amateur Computer Group of New Jersey, one of the Festival's co-sponsoring organizations.) TCF prides itself as a place for the hobbyist to learn about new and interesting developments in the world of computing. We present a number of hobbyists and professionals speaking on a variety of computer- and computing-related topics, a Ham Radio licensing session, and an Arduino workshop.

This year, I went in with two goals: to present an introductory talk on home electronic cutters, and to display some of my T-shirt and other Cricut-fabricated designs at a vendor table in the hope of selling something (or at least getting some orders).

The talk went reasonably well, considering that for the first half of it I had to make do with downloading my PowerPoint presentation onto the school's computer and walking my iPad around the classroom so people could see how Design Space differs depending on the platform. (Note: the SlideShare version linked to above did not copy the Kelson Sans and Lato typefaces used by the PowerPoint template I chose, Kental NMNL from Creative Market.) After the talk ended, I carried my Cricut and computer back to the Vendor room to man my table.

Earlier that morning, I found that instead of having business-card display holders in my table supplies, I had only tri-fold brochure displays. I did have 100-lb cardstock and a variety of adhesives in my table supplies, and a month subscription to Cricut Access, so I searched its database for a business-card display holder.

You'd think that with over 70,000 images, box designs, and so on, and an audience that includes hundreds of small-business owners, there'd be something as basic as a business-card display holder. No such luck. Fortunately, it's something easy enough to jury-rig — and when complete, a design I could make public so other small-business owners can use at vendor tables of their own. (A more refined version, available over at my Cricut profile, is the subject of my next post.)

It took me a couple of tries to get something usable for on-site — which was fine for demonstrating the device, but not so fine for having my head far enough outside of my computer to engage the public as much as I'd have liked. That said, having my Cricut actually working was probably a better demo than just explaining it and showing folk my already-made samples.

There was more interest from people who thought I was selling Cricut machines or who wanted to know what the machine did, than people interested in buying my designs or having me design something for them. There were also a few folk who were looking for more information than I could present in a 40-minute deonstration, or whose family members had a Cricut (or other home cutter) and who wondered what the machine was and what it did.

Business Card Thoughts

Despite it being the age of bump-or-touch to transfer contact information, most of us still need, prefer, expect, or collect the paper précis of our professional identities and contact information in the form of 3.5" x 2" pieces of cardstock known as business cards or calling cards. As someone who crafts, instructs, is an officer of a local computer club, a long-standing member of an international fan association, and who has been active in the Diabetes Online Community, I have needed to carry several different versions of these cards, each of which requires a different professional or personal identity, and different subsets of my contact information.

Computer Club (current)

Blogger Card (Blog is still there, just inactive)

While most business-facing people never need to carry more than one version of their card at any time, those of us with social lives or "side hustles" cannot afford to be so narrow-minded.

Early version of our Web Warren cards

The speed with which our social lives change mean that for many of us, ordering 500 business cards through a service like VistaPrint means that 400 or more are likely to be obsolete before they get handed out. For us, home printing has been the service of choice for the past 20 years or so. We purchase 50-sheet (500-card) packages of microperforated paper from Staples, download the appropriate template from Avery (or create our own), add in our personal information, and press "Print".

Front of 2013 diabetes card 2014 card removes AOL Instant Messenger

That said, home printing for me entails a lot of waste. Some of that is because the margins on business cards are so narrow that a slight misregistration ends up with print trailing into the perforated margins (or worse, onto adjacent cards on the page), and some of that because I've had a number of two-sided designs that misfed or misregistered on the second side, rendering a sheet of paper... useless.

Back of 2013 diabetes card 2014 card removes defunct communities, updates Tour de Cure information

Right now, we're at the stage of having to purchase a new pack of business card blanks. Unlike 20 years ago (or even 10!), the cost seems quite expensive compared to what I remember, and even compared to some of VistaPrint's higher-quality offerings. In comparison, cardstock is relatively cheap, and the flexibility of Design Space's "Print then Cut" feature made me wonder what Cricut's business-card potential might be.

(This is not to say that home electronic cutting machines would be the only way to create business cards from non-perforated cardstock: good manual paper cutters run half the price and serve admirably in a pinch. The problems are that the paper often shifts, and you don't have the sort of precision you can get from an electronic machine.)

For my latest Craft Instructor business cards, I wanted to work with the "Marble Glitter Business Card" template I'd gotten through an email subscription to Font Bundles/Design Bundles. I had some initial font issues in InDesign. After finding and installing the correct typeface and running a test print, the writing came out looking washed out, and the colors were too brownish. Since the original design was a Photoshop file, I opened it to edit. Photoshop CS4 only showed me one business card at the time. I tried Word, but it wasn't letting me layer text over the image frame. It was at this point that I imported the Photoshop-edited single-card graphic into Design Space.I resized the graphic to what seemed a reasonable size, not realizing it was meant as a full-bleed design, meant to be cut inside the decorative border. I ended up with six cards, approximately 3.6" wide by 2 1/6" tall — a bit larger than the standard 3.5" x 2" North American business card. I Attached the cards together to force Design Space to Print Then Cut a three by two grid of them on a single page of cardstock, rather than trying to make them all right-side up and spread over two pages.

I next tried to create a bordered card using one of the "Gold Digital Papers" designs from Design Bundles. I rescaled the paper from a 12" x 12" background to 1.25" and tiled it over a business card template in InDesign. I layered an opaque white rectangle in front, and my text box on top, and exported my single card to an importable .jpg file. After uploading my card to Design Space and resizing it a bit, I used the Square from Basic Shapes and elongated it into a 3.5" x 2" rectangle, centered it over the card, tweaked my card size, and Sliced the two layers it to create my business card. Setting these cards one next to the other which comes out to three rows of two cards, rotated sideways, plus one card in readable orientation. These printed out well, but my choice of typeface resulted in unreadably small text.

Finally, I used a background from a group called "Set of Marble Texture Cards" along with the "LD Laundry" typeface to create something a bit whimsical. I also used the Web Warren's short URL generator to create a custom link to my Design Space profile. Between this version and the gold-and-black design, I found that even Print Then Cut can end up with very small registration errors that can mar the final finish of your business card.

I reformatted my canvas with the Marble Texture card to allow for bleed. This reduced my yield per sheet of cardstock from 7 to 6. At a retail price of $16 per 100-sheet pack of 100-lb cardstock, this comes out to just under three cents per card for the cardstock. Compare this to $25 per 500-card (50-sheet) package of microperforated business card blanks, and you come out ahead, despite the larger volume of wasted-space on a page. Of course, if you're like me and buy on sale or with a coupon, your costs may be a bit less. Then again, the amount of time it takes to feed page after page of cardstock into the printer and then your cutter may make the costs of a service... worth it.

Update: check these posts for info on how to make a matching business card holder for a desk or display table:
Upright Business Card Holder
Slanted Business Card Holder

Noshin' Hamantaschen

Oh how happy we shall be, noshin' Hamantaschen!

A snippet of a Purim song — all that I think my Dad remembered — floated through my mind this past week as we approached the Jewish festival of Purim. While the religious cause of the celebration is the Jews' escape from the genocide proposed by the Persian vizier, Haman (as described in the book of Esther), the celebrations are loud, drunken, and often in costume — to the point where it's best described as "the Jewish Mardi Gras".

The marquee food of this festival is Hamantaschen — a triangular shaped cookie or pastry, traditionally filled with poppy seed paste or prune butter, though modern filling variations range from fruit preserves (usually raspberry or apricot) to chocolate, peanut butter, or even pastry cream. Depending on which story you hear, the name refers to Haman's hat, his ear, or his pocket/money pouch. At any rate, when we eat them — just as we shout, stamp, and wave noisemakers (graggers) during the public reading of Esther — we are obliterating the name of the story's villain.

Purim T-Shirt with cardstock positioning template

I Googled the snippet I remembered, only to find that I had learned the first part of the snippet incorrectly, that the lyrics came from a 1940s-era pedagogue, and that the familiar children's melody came from a drinking song often heard at Renaissance faires. (The pertinent results here.)

Of course, I would bake Hamantaschen (how could I not?)... but I also had an idea for a fun Purim T-shirt. (Hey, I'm a bit old to pass for Queen Esther or Queen Vashti, and nobody dresses up as Haman's wife!) I was able to use the basic shapes in Design Space to create a bitten-into Hamantaschen and some scattered crumbs, along with Cookie Monster's patented "nomnomnomnomnom" for my design.

Shirt next to real homemade Hamantaschen

While a shift at work meant I was not going to get drunk enough to not know the difference between "Blessed is Mordechai" and "Cursed is Haman", I have another shirt design to share (my Design Space profile here).

Cake is King

Today is known as Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday, Mardi Gras...

It's the culmination of two weeks of Carnival, the starkest possible contrast with tomorrow's Ash Wednesday, marking the beginning of introspective Lent, leading up to Easter. For Christians, this is similar to the Jewish month of Elul, where we try to improve ourselves before Rosh Hashanah and make us worthy of forgiveness on Yom Kippur.

Mardi Gras is usually close to the Jewish festival of Purim, in which we also dress up in costume ("fancy dress" for those speaking the Queen's English), party hard, and get drunk. For us, Purim comes about 30 days before Passover. This year it will be on March 21, close enough to the first day of Spring.

Mardi Gras is not my religion, and not really a fascination, but I've been exposed to it by a childhood friend whose father was relocated to New Orleans, by APCUG (Association of PC User Groups) conferences at the Orleans Hotel in Las Vegas (which has a Mardi Gras theme), and most recently by NCIS: New Orleans.

The usual things we associate with Mardi Gras are costumes and masks, beads, tokens, parades, music, and King Cake.

As with Easter candies, King Cake is something I've never had the chance to try... but I've seen the recipes (or kits?) over at King Arthur Flour. While I'd've preferred to have my first experience of this delicacy from a professional bake shop, the costs I was seeing were prohibitive — so it was off to King Arthur Flour's website and DIY.

After looking at the recipes, I selected their basic (is there anything basic about King Cake?) recipe as well as a King Cake flavored cupcake recipe. Since the King Cake is a risen yeast bread, I made the cupcakes while the King Cake was going through its first rising. I didn't have purple sugar, but I did have some purple stars from this past summer's USS AVENGER anniversary party. I also didn't have yellow sugar, but I had gold...

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the recipe only makes a dozen cupcakes, and two of that number disappeared before I had time to make the icing. From the two recipes together, I surmise that the basic "King Cake" taste is citrus and vanilla, with an undetectable undercurrent of nutmeg. I know that nutmeg and almond are flavors that both enhance vanilla, but I think next time through, I'd rather taste the nutmeg...

I was a bit disappointed in the King Cake recipe. I opted for units of grams rather than volume, which I find a more accurate way of measuring. Unfortunately, the measurement for instant yeast remained in volume units, so I have no idea if I had too much or too little. Either I had too much filling for the cake, or I had let it get too loose, so I had a mess trying to fold the dough over the filling — not to mention trying to get it all into a ring! And finally, there was no indicator other than color to test whether or not the bread was fully baked, nor was there a range of times to check (e.g., 25-30 minutes after tenting).

That said, I ended up letting the thing rise a bit too long on the second rising, and my foil tent ended up leaving the edges of the cake exposed.

I left the cake to cool while I went to work, where I purchased purple and yellow sanding sugars, as well as some cute crown-shaped sprinkles to make the cake really "kingly". As I don't subscribe to the religious context of Mardi Gras, I didn't worry about charms or a baby.

What looked like a "thick, but pourable" glaze in my mixer ended up more spreadable than pourable, and I had to press the sugar into the icing so it wouldn't fall off. This is what came out.

To my mind, it was too flat and wide, and the bottom got a bit burned despite baking it on parchment.

Inside, there was a very thin layer of filling. The overall taste reminded me of the round Danish-like coffee rings Mom used to bring home from the store, and the icing reminded me of Cinnabon icing (too much and too sweet).

At some point, I might want to try variations on the recipe, but not decorated for Mardi Gras. Maybe not even iced, but used as a base for French Toast?