After the re-design of my blog a couple of months ago I knew I needed new business cards so as a part of my preparation for Alt Summit I decided to finally make them. I really wanted a handmade feel to them because that’s what my blog is all about, so printing cards was not really appealing to me in this case. I had so many ideas but very little time to actually dedicate to make them, so it had to be simple and cute. After a few hours of stamping, printing, cutting and taping, here is the result =]

The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about my business cards was the leftover, super cute, wood, handmade ladybugs that were going to be part of our wedding favors, but since we decided to go a different route, they were gathering dust in a box. That’s when there was a bright light that went off in my head! I had about 200 tiny ladybugs with double stick tape on the bottom so you can stick them wherever you want.

My next step was to order a few custom stamps from Jessica of JLMould, she made a couple of stamps before so I knew I wanted her to make these ones (If you ever need custom stamps go to her!) I also got a few different shades of turquoise cardboard, glassine envelopes and gathered my puncher and the Japanese tape that inspired the pattern used in my blog design.

NOTE: Jessica from JLMould was kind enough to offer a 5% off in all stamps for the HowJoyful readers using the code: JLMould – Thank you Jessica!!

My first idea was to make little craft bags the same size as a business card. Even tho to me they looked super cute, it was way too time consuming (the craft paper envelope part), even using a cutting machine. So I only made a few trial ones of those.

I opted for just using glassine bags that were the perfect size. I printed a little greeting explaining that ladybugs are a very popular lucky charm in Chile and punched with a scalloped round punch. Stamped both the card that I cut out of the turquoise cardboard and the front of the glassine bag so I can put one on top of the other and tape the corners.

So in order to get to the ladybug (in the pictures doesn’t really show that you can see the ladybug through the glassine envelope) people have to only un-tape one of the corners, I didn’t tape the glassine bag shut either, because it would have been too much work for the poor people getting the cards hehe. After witnessing people opening the bags and taking the ladybugs out I can say that everyone seemed to enjoy it =] Below you can see what the little envelope contained.

While exchanging business cards at Alt summit, I received very positive feedback and it seemed that everyone loved the fact that it had a goodie in it. And I really loved how the back of the ladybug note has a QR code to howjoyful.com 8] -> Nerd smile!

So there you go! the HowJoyful business cards =]

ps. Amy Butler said that from now on every time she saw a ladybug she was going to remember me – not that she will actually remember me – she will probably think of the crazy girl with the ladybug story that she met at the Alt Summit white party – LOL I think it’s still pretty awesome!

I hope you all have a lovely day!
XO