Making cards happen (Part 1)

For years, I've been toying with the idea of printing my work and making cards with it. I want to share my work and figured cards are an inexpensive way to do that. But, I want the cards to look professional, to be affordable, and to be "not for profit" in some way.

I started making cards for profit when I was a little girl, selling hand-drawn cards to the merchants of the small town I grew up in. Since then, I've experimented with making photography and hand-made cards and envelopes. I've never come away very satisfied. They either didn't look the way I was hoping they would or they were too expensive to make; either the paper or printing costs were too much or it took a lot of time and energy for me to make them. I wanted to also add a dollar to the selling price so I could do something that my philanthropist great-grandfather did: for every dollar earned, a dollar went to charity.

Considering this recently, I think I've come up with a solution. I'll be putting together some cards made from inexpensive card stock and printed on my printer at home. Hopefully the final product's cost will be about $2-$2.50.

I'll post the results of this latest experiment later. My goal is to get my materials together, print the cards, and see if they sell at my next art show, coming up on July 8, 2011 (see Art Invitation post). Bon chance to me and to anyone else working on their own creative endeavors!