Have you ever wanted to design your own game cards at home? Maybe you came up with an awesome idea for a new card game. Or perhaps you want to print custom cards for an existing game.
In 2024, printing high-quality cards at home is easier than ever. With the right tools and techniques, you can create professional-looking game cards from the comfort of your living room.
In this step-by-step guide, as a professional custom game cards printing manufacturer, I’ll show you exactly how to print your own game cards using common hardware and software. You don’t need any fancy equipment — even a basic inkjet printer can produce fantastic results.
Why Print Your Own Game Cards?
Before we dive in, let’s go over a few of the benefits of printing custom cards yourself:
Testing New Game Ideas: If you design tabletop games, printing cards at home lets you rapidly test new ideas. Instead of waiting months for a print shop, you can print cards overnight to share with your playtest group.
Customizing Existing Games: Do you have a favorite game, but wish it had different art or more player options? Custom printing lets you tailor the experience.
Lower Costs: Ordering a full print run through a publisher can be prohibitively expensive. Printing on your home printer saves money for testing concepts.
Creative Control: When you print cards yourself, you have full control over every design choice. You can tweak the smallest details between each round of testing.
The versatility makes home card printing a no-brainer for game creators and customizers alike.
Now that we’ve covered why you should print your own cards, let’s look at how to do it…
How to Print Your Own Game Card
Choose Card Printing Paper
The first step is picking out the right paper or cardstock for your game cards. You have a couple options here:
- Regular Paper: Standard 8.5” x 11” printer paper works in a pinch. However, regular paper is flimsy and won’t hold up well over time. I recommend upgrading to cardstock instead.
- Cardstock Paper: Heavier cardstock gives your finished cards durability, thickness, and that iconic stiffness that screams “real playing cards”. Cardstock paper comes in various sizes, colors, textures, thicknesses, and more. More on picking the best cardstock later…
Most office supply stores sell cardstock sheets with common card dimensions:
- Poker Size: 2.5” x 3.5” inches — Fits games like poker and Magic: The Gathering
- Bridge Size: 2.25″ x 3.5″ inches — The standard for bridge & some tarot decks
- Mini Size: 1.75” x 2.5” inches — For games with small hands like dominoes
If you’re designing a card game from scratch, figure out what dimensions you need before buying paper. If you’re printing custom cards for a game you already own, measure the cards to identify the size.
Oh, one more thing…
Be sure to buy cardstock that’s compatible with your printer. Check the printer’s manual and product page to determine what paper weights and coating types it supports.
Cardstock Weight Guide
Cardstock weight is measured in pounds (e.g. 60lb, 110lb). Higher card weights are thicker and more durable. But they can cause jams depending on your printer.
Here are some common cardstock weights to choose from:
- 60lb to 80lb: Ideal for home card printing. Thicker than paper without risking printer issues. Provides nice stiffness and feel.
- 100lb to 120lb: Very thick stock with an almost waxy coating. Prints beautifully, but likely too thick for average printers without issues.
Based on much testing and tinkering, my pick is 65lb to 75lb cardstock for home game card printing. It has the perfect balance of durability and printer compatibility.
I use Neenah’s 65lb Bright White cardstock and love the professional results from my inkjet printer. The slight off-white color gives the finished cards a vintage aesthetic reminiscent of cards printed decades ago.
Paper Coatings
Cardstock also comes with different paper coatings that affect how the ink adheres:
- Bright: Smooth, lightly coated stock that works with inkjet & laser printers. Provides vibrant color reproduction. My default choice.
- Matte: Flat porous coating ink penetrates for rich blacks. Inspired by early 20th-century cards.
- Linen: Textured stock inspired by vintage linen-pressed cards. Provides unique tactile feel resembling faux linen.
Coating choice depends mainly on personal preference. For most home card printing applications, bright white cardstock offers the best mix of printer compatibility, affordability and great aesthetics.
Print Card Fronts and Backs Separately
When printing full-color cards at home, you’ll get the best alignment results printing card fronts and backs separately.
Most home printers can’t reliably print doublesided cards without slight misalignment between front & back faces. Unless perfectly aligned, the offset looks sloppy and unprofessional.
By printing fronts and backs on separate sheets, you avoid alignment headaches. Glue sheets together after printing for beautiful results every time.
Pro Tip: Print card backs on colored construction paper rather than cardstock. Saves expensive cardstock for important card faces. Glued construction paper backs are thick enough for most games.
Design Cards Virtually First
Before rushing to print paper cards, lay out card designs digitally using design software like Illustrator or InDesign.
Building cards virtually lets you:
- Achieve perfect alignment between card elements
- Standardize design across all cards
- Tweak cards quickly without physical cutting or gluing
- Experiment with different layouts, color schemes, etc
- Templatize your workflow to adjust one master card
- Export print-ready digital assets
I like to set trim lines, outlines, and bleeds in my digital card document. Makes the eventual gluing, cutting, and sleeving stages smoother later.
Bleed vs Print Area vs Trim Lines
Let’s clarify what trim lines, bleeds and print areas represent…
1. Print Area
Innermost rectangular outline = the final card size I intend to cut to. Content must fit fully inside this region.
2. Trim Lines
Dashed outline 0.125 inches around Print Area. This area gets trimmed off after printing. Defines outer edge of final cut cards.
3. Bleed Area
Outermost outline 0.125 inches outside Trim Lines. Background colors and imagery get extended into here for best cut edge results without white borders. Get cut off during trimming stage.
Doesn’t matter if not grasped fully now. The key takeaway is we:
- Keep important content within the Print Area
- Extend background bleeds/colors into the Bleed Area
That way, finished cards cut cleanly with full-bleed backgrounds and crisp content.
Add Cut Lines
Cut lines are optional vertical and horizontal lines laid over card designs to guide where to cut neatly and precisely.
I add subtle cut lines 1 pixel wide matching the trim line placements. The lines clearly indicate where blades should slice when hand-cutting or with a paper trimmer later on without needing to measure everything manually.
Leave Blank Bleed Space
Don’t place text or important elements close to bleed area edges. Leave at least 0.25 inches of padding, more for intricate designs.
Why blank padding? No matter how careful, hand-cutting introduces slight variation. A small cutting mistake might chop text or images too closely-placed to card edges. Blank bleed space absorbs the cutline inaccuracies so important stuff avoids unintentional cropping.
Export Print Files
I design game cards using Adobe products, but any vector or image editor works for basic card generation.
When complete, export your cards into print-ready files like PNGs and PDFs. Ensure exported files have:
✔️ Bleed areas and crop lines
✔️ High DPI (300+ recommended)
✔️ Color profile embedded
Crop marks automatically tell your printer where to cut when you feed card sheets into paper cutters later.
High 300+ DPI (dots per inch) provides enough image data for sharp results when printing small cards. DPI too low and cards print blurry.
Embedded color profiles automatically calibrate color output to your printer so cards match your calibrated monitor viewing them onscreen. Critical for color accuracy.
With digital assets exported correctly, we’re ready to print!
Carefully Printing Cards
Feed your high-quality cardstock into the printer tray and doublecheck settings before printing.
Turn off page scaling or resizing in the print driver. We already exported cards at precision dimensions; scaling skews designs.
Likewise, disable any automatic print enhancement features that could introduce unintended changes. Print files in original format as exported for optimal accuracy.
Select the highest print quality mode available for best detail and ink saturation. Game cards are small, so higher DPI options make a visible difference.
Finally, for best color matching between print runs, use color managed workflow options if your printer supports it. This stabilizes colors over longer print jobs.
And that’s it! Hit print and let the magic happen…
If anything prints incorrectly the first round — misaligned cards, inconsistent color, etc — tweak driver settings and reprint until perfection.
Patience pays off for fantastic looking homemade game cards!
Glue Card Layers
With fronts and backs printed separately, we’ll now attach them into beautiful cards using spray adhesive.
Any gentle spray glue or double-sided tape works here. Key advantage with spray? Easily covers full card backs evenly.
My adhesive of choice is 3M’s Craft Spray — dries rapidly without warping cardstock. Position fronts and spray card backs lightly with glue, then swiftly combine into complete cards taking care not to shift misaligned.
Flatten merged cards under weight like heavy books. Let sit 15 minutes allowing glue to fully cure. Caution: Moving cards before adhesive sets will tear cardstock surfaces! Patience prevents botched prints.
And voila! Perfectly married game cards await. Now for final polish…
Smooth Cut Card Edges
Cut printed cardstock sheets into individual cards using either:
- Precision paper cutter
- Metal ruler + X-Acto knife
I prefer a high-quality electric titling guillotine cutter for edge trimming. Cuts thick cardstock smoothly without tearing thanks to precision blade calibrations.
Make sure cutter blade sharp — multi-layer cardstock quickly dulls cheap blades. Replace when cutting resistance increases.
Reference cut guide lines overlaying card designs while slicing for accuracy. Remove card scraps post-cutting.
For most tabletop games, also cut or round card corners to further improve aesthetics and handling. Sharper corners easily snag and reveal hidden card faces (or players might poke their gaming buddy accidentally!)
I clip corners using a specialty corner rounder punch. Electric corner cutters also work wonderfully for mass card production.
Sleeve Finished Cards
As a final durability touch, I always sleeve printed game cards with transparent pocket covers like you see on collectible card games.
Card sleeves prevent scuffs, fingerprints, scratches and water damage during repeated gameplay shuffling and handling.
Any thickness of small card sleeve fits. I prefer premium thicker sleeves for maximum protection and opacity. Thinner penny sleeves work great too while keeping budgets low.
When buying card sleeves, match measurements to your custom card dimensions. Most game supply shops sell standard poker, bridge, mini and tarot sized sleeves to fit whatever games you’re printing.
And that wraps my home card printing workflow! Give these methods a shot for churning professional decks overnight.
Troubleshooting Home Card Printing
No process ever goes perfectly smooth first try. Here are solutions to a few common card printing headaches:
Ink Smudges: Choose instant-dry printer inks. Or allow 5-10 minutes drying time before gluing to avoid smudging.
Paper Jam: Ensure cardstock weight falls within printer’s specs. Clean dust causing internal friction.
Misaligned Layers: Print alignment test pattern beforehand. Tweak offsets digitally or physically shift layers when gluing.
Blurred Images: Export print files at higher resolution (400+ dpi). Print images natively without resizing for crisper results.
Stick with it through failure or misprints! Learning to overcome tricky printing challenges now pays off hugely for designing better games in the future.
Soon you’ll be pumping out gorgeous custom game cards at record pace!
So get ready to fully realize your wildest game design dreams in 2024! This simplified card printing system opens infinite creative possibilities.
Go Forth and Print, My Friends!
Thanks so much for reading my personal guide to DIY game card printing!
I hope these techniques inspire you to start rapidly testing card game ideas from home at low cost. By making iteration fast and accessible, creators can focus more energy on the real goal: designing incredibly fun, engaging player experiences!
Are you currently working on a game needing custom printed cards? Any additional pointers I missed for beginners? Let me know in the comments!