I want to print my own business cards. I have an HP Officejet G55 which has a U-shaped paper path. Can I do it? Which paper should I get?
Bone. And the lettering should be something called ‘Cillian Rail’.
You can get perforated cardstock specifically for printing out business cards. Also comes in Ivory, Gloss, Matte, etc.
Definitely card stock. Anything else looks like “I couldn’t bother to have this professionally done, so I just ran off some on my home machine”.
Color is entirely up to you. Many prefer the Bone/Grey/White, but some prefer something with color so it “stands out”. AFAIC, it’s six of one/half-dozen of the other.
Here’s a tip, though: my hubby is a perfectionist. To the point that it actually hinders him. When he was trying to do his own business cards at home (“it’s cheaper than having them professionally done”), he was so caught up in getting the ‘perfect’ business card, that he ended up with none at all.
If you don’t have any business cards, guess how much business they’ll get you?
One tip I have is to practice on a sheet of ordinary paper first and hold the two up to a strong light to check that the breaks are in all the right places.
There are also perforated stocks available. Some end up with no obvious breaks. They should make it through your printer fine.
I print and crop all the business cards at work, and I’ll tell you, the hardest part is cutting them apart. Go slow, and go by the measurements. Try do it in a couple of different orders to find out what works best for you.
Avery makes a non-perfed business card stock. The paper is scored rather heavily - if they cut one or two fibers deeper, they’d come apart in the box. After printing, you fold them on the score lines, and nice smooth-edge cards appear. The “microperf” cards are OK, but have slightly fuzzy edges. The clean-line cards, OTOH, will look professionally cut.
I *think * they’ll be OK in a U-path printer. I’ve run them in a color laser printer, and they do great on the straight path to the rear tray, but once I forgot, and they survived the bend into the top tray with no problems.
If at all possible, configure your printer for a straight path. Also, be sure to get the right kind - inkjet or laser.
Quartz’ suggestion about printing a test page on regular paper and holding it up to the cardstock is an excellent one. Happily, Word and most other word processors know all of the dimensions and margins for Avery labels and cards, so layout is fairly mindless.
About the only major drawback to printing business cards at home is that you’ll never be able to use actual cardstock, which is about twice as thick as anything you’d be able to coax through your printer.
Companies like Vistaprint are so cheap, why bother with homemade?
Quartz, Avery has DesignPro software that’ll help you make incredible business cards and other label-related documents. As others have mentioned, you can find precut cardstock at your local office supply shop, computer store, or online. Photo quality cardstock was surprisingly hard for me to find in the US though not elsewhere.
Brynda, why did I print my own cards when my company supplies Vistaprint? Impact. People remember me and tack my custom designed and printed photo business card on their corkboards. A quick glance and they’ve got my number from the dozen or so “standard” cards they have posted.