How To Make Cards
At Home
Did you know you can make high quality cards at home with perfect alignment, without those pesky white lines?
This page covers all aspects of making print and play cards at home for TCG cards and sports cards, from card design to alignment, printing and finishing your cards.
Want a quick & easy way to print cards at home? Check out my Print & Play Card Template.
Wanting to make cards for TTRPGs? You probably want to be on this page.
DESIGNING CARDS & IMAGES
Standard (poker) cards are 2.5" (6.35 cm) wide by 3.5" (8.89 cm) high. This is the size used for sports cards and cards for most TCGs like Magic: the Gathering (MtG), Flesh and Blood, Pokemon, One Piece, Altered, and Netrunner. Your best options for getting art for print at home cards are to create your own images or use existing images.
HOW TO MAKE DIGITAL CARD IMAGES
Use your favorite image editing software and create artboards that are 2.5" (6.35 cm) wide by 3.5" (8.89 cm) high, or a 2.5:3.5 aspect ratio, then export your images. You can make a digital copy of images you've drawn by hand by scanning or taking a photo in good lighting.
HOW TO GET DIGITAL COPIES OF
CARD IMAGES
Your can make a copy of digital card images on web pages. You should get permission from image copyright holders before making and printing copies of images.
Dan Wright (DanDMadeEasy) is the copyright holder for the images above, which were created by Lost Haven Art. You have permission to use the images however you like. You can get a digital copy of the images by right-clicking on the image and selecting Save image as..., then saving to your file system.
Some websites use a compressed WEBP format to store images. This format is incompatible with many apps for aligning and printing images. You can convert images in a WEBP format to more compatible formats like PNG or JPG by using a free account on Canva or free online image conversion websites.
WHAT IF IMAGES ARE THE WRONG ASPECT RATIO?
If you want to use images that aren't 2.5:3.5 aspect ratio, you can crop your images to 2.5:3.5 using a free account on Canva or another method.
HOW TO ALIGN CARDS FOR DOUBLE-SIDED PRINTING
There are a few methods to align cards for double-sided printing.
Print front and back images on the same page, then fold and stick cards together.
This saves ink and makes it easy to align cards, but it takes a while to glue cards together, and prepared cards will easily get damaged or frayed.
Make card back images way bigger than card front images (add bleed) so it doesn't matter that you cut out a large portion of the card back - you won't get white lines.
This is quicker as you don't need to glue cards, but it uses extra ink and limits the design of card backs (or leads to ugly card backs depending on the alignment of your printer).
Work out how your printer is aligned and correct for any misalignment by changing the position of images in the files you'll print.
This gives you the best of both worlds, it's quick, saves ink compared to adding lots of bleed, and lets you make awesome card backs and print them perfectly. This is the method I use to make cards at home. You can check out how it works in the video below.
THE ANSWER FOR PRINTING CARDS DOUBLE-SIDED AT HOME
I created a template that lets you upload any image and print cards perfectly double-sided. This makes it really quick and easy to print your cards perfectly every time - you just upload your images, and the templates do the rest.
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Make cards from any image
(front & back)
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Automatic image duplication
saves you time
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Optimized double-sided printing
alignment
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Use full detail card backs and save ink; upload one image and print 1-8 card backs per page
I'm making a set of cards to chronicle the life and adventures of my first child, Aurora ~Dan
DanDMadeEasy Patrons can get a discount of 25% on all DanDMadeEasy digital products, and earn credits to redeem on free products.
HOW TO PRINT CARDS AT HOME
You'll need thick card stock and a color printer with ink. If you're going to print a lot, ink tank printers are really economical. You can find a step by step process and list of materials I use or recommend for printing cards by watching the video below or checking out this blog post.
HOW TO CUT & FINISH PRINT AT HOME CARDS
You have options for cutting and finishing your cards. At a minimum, you'll need a pair of scissors or a paper trimmer, but you may also want to use a laminator and laminating pouches to make better quality cards, a corner cutter to cut the corners on your cards, and card sleeves, deck boxes or card binders to protect, store and display your cards.
You can find a step by step process and list of materials I use or recommend for cutting and finishing cards by watching the video below or checking out this blog post.