As an artist, you want your artwork to look great on the products you sell. You probably don’t want to hand all of your possible profit to a faceless corporation, either. The best way to meet both of these goals is to make the goods yourself. Being able to say that you, the artist, made the items yourself adds value to your products!
The quality of the products that you make yourself will depend primarily on two things: the quality of your materials and equipment, and your attention to detail. A lot of the appearance of these products relies upon the care you take with the finishing touches, and your skill with lining things up straight and using scissors will play a large role.
Cards
If you’ve chosen to make prints, you can also make cards. The difficulties with cards are several. You have to use stiff, high-quality paper that looks good on both sides. You have to cut your paper to size. You have to fold them. And you have to fit them to envelopes.
Pre-cut, pre-scored (a cut that goes just far enough through a paper to make it easy to fold) cards are available at any office and craft supply store, and are often packaged with envelopes. The biggest drawback to these packages is price. Add to that price your own cost of ink and you won’t be making much money on them unless you price them high enough to drive off a casual buyer.
It is best to use a dual-sided paper, one that has no difference in color between the front and the back. Whatever paper you use, make sure you do a test fold: some papers are brittle and will flake or crack at a fold-line. This is particularly problematic with laser prints, because of the heated-ink application process. Epson’s double-sided matte is a respectable stiffness, and is a bright, attractive white for inkjet cards.
US letter-sized (8.5 x 11 inches) paper can be cut directly in half to produce 5.5 x 8.5 inch card templates, which fold in half to create a 4.25 x 5.5 card. This size fits perfectly into an A2 envelope, very commonly available at office and stationery supply stores. These can be purchased in lots of 500 for .10 per unit or less. You can cut pages in half yourself, using a straight edge and rotary cutter or a reasonably priced rotary cutter ensemble. You can also take them to a copy service shop and have your cards cut with a guillotine cutter for a reasonable fee and a fraction of the effort. Most printers will feed half-letter paper with no trouble, so you can print on pre-cut paper.
Most full-service copy shops also offer folding services. You can bring them a stack of cards which they feed through their machine. This can be risky, because paper jams can ruin cards, and the machine action can scratch or damage the surface of your card. Make sure the service you are using has some kind of guarantee or reasonable management before you trust them with your pre-printed goods. I personally fold all of my cards by hand, because I find that I have a more precise eye than some machines and I have a low level of trust.
