Business cards

I wanted to create business cards for myself but I haven't been a fan of the printed-on-demand ones I've bought before. I'm not sure where the inspiration came from but I thought it would be interesting to cut them out of vintage post-cards.

I also had a vision of the writing on them. Not something typed but something hand written. Not wanting to hand write 100's of business cards I turned to the cricut cutter which can be used as a plotter.

Being particular I also wanted a specific kind of ink. Ballpoint pen specifically. Which is not a natively supported pen for the cricut. To resolve this I measured one of the included tools and 3D modeled and printed an adaptor for a standard pen I had around. This worked well and allowed me to write and draw in multiple colors with the real feeling of something hand written.

To create the pattern I used my iPad to hand write the cards once. After that I was able to import the vector drawing of my hand writing into the cricut software. The cricut software (at least the free version) isn't optimized for repeat operations on the same object. Along with the handwriting I had to figure out an indexing system to reliably run three jobs on one object. I black pen, red pen and cut pass.

These are the progress photos and results! I'm very happy with how they've turned out. If you'd like one just ask me next time you see me