Step by Step: How To Make a Custom Trading Card?

As their popularity has spread, trading cards have become a global phenomenon. Trading card games like Pokemon are only one of many sorts of trading cards available. Even while there are already many trading cards available, it’s still enjoyable to try your hand at creating your own.

Making your own trading cards is a fun way to express your individuality while crafting something that you and your loved ones can share and enjoy. So How To Make a Custom Trading Card?

How To Make a Custom Trading Card By Hand?

Step 1. Collect Your Supplies

Paper, a pencil, some markers, and some scissors are all you need to create your own set of trading cards. If you don’t feel like painting, you may use stickers or images instead.

Use heavyweight paper. You may use index cards, construction paper, or even heavy card stock. You need robust cards if you want them to last and look professional.

If you want your trading cards to stand out, use markers of contrasting colors.

Step 2. Start cutting out your cards

Step 3: Integrate your images

If you’re designing football trading cards, NFL trading cards, or a trading card game, your art direction will change accordingly.

If you’re designing a trading card game, you should make sure each card features a different character. Start by sketching each figure in pencil so you may erase and start over if necessary.

You may give your character a finished, vibrant look by tracing it with a marker and coloring it in. If you’d rather not sketch your characters, you may always use stickers instead. Choose some stickers you like and place them where the artwork would normally be on your trading cards.

Football card makers should use printed photographs of the athletes they depict. Attach them to the card using tape or glue. You should just use a minimal amount of adhesive since this will allow it to dry quickly.

You may make your own set of trading cards by printing out images of your friends and family and gluing them on. If you want to make cards for a group of pals from school, you may also utilize wallet-sized class images.

There should be a blank space on both the top and bottom of your card for you to add information about yourself.

Step 4 Complete your trading cards with specifics

Identifying names and background information for each individual must be included. It is totally up to you to decide what details to add.

At the top of each card, use clear, readable lettering to indicate the name of your character or the person they represent. Use a marker to make the name stand out by making it bold.

Underneath the picture, write down some information about the figure. Add in the character’s abilities, degree of talent, etc., the baseball players’ statistics, team history, etc., and the person’s preferred cuisine and color. If you want these specifics to be easily readable, use a tiny marker or a very dark pen.

Step 5 Complete the card making process

Laminating your cards is not required, however, it is recommended if you want them to last as long as possible. Get a laminating machine, or have your cards laminated by a trading card maker.

How To Make a Custom Trading Card By Computer?

Step 1 access a word processor or editing program on a computer

You may use Microsoft Word, Pages, Adobe Photoshop, or any other tool that allows you to draw shapes, add photos, and format text in boxes.

Microsoft Word and Apple Pages are two examples of user-friendly and straightforward word processors, whereas Adobe Photoshop is more complex but still accessible to the average user. Do it in a software environment that you feel most at ease with.

Having a printer connected to your computer is also recommended. Trading cards may be printed at any business offering printing services, such as WJPC if you don’t have access to a printer.

Step 2. design the artwork that will be used on the cards

The genre of trading cards you’re creating will dictate the visuals you choose. Make a file on your computer just for your pictures. Create a new folder here to store your images as you design your card template.

If you want to make a truly original trading card game, drawing your own artwork is a terrific alternative. Create a pencil sketch, then use a marker to add color.

After finishing your character designs, you can either scan them using a scanning printer or photograph each design and save them to your computer. (If you do decide to snap pictures, do it in well-lit conditions with no shadows.)

Make your own trading card game using pictures of your friends, family, and pets as playable characters. You may easily make anyone into a character in your story by importing their photos onto your computer.

You may construct your own baseball cards by downloading images of your favorite players and printing them out.

Make all of your photographs and artwork squares. They’ll be a breeze to incorporate into your existing templates.

Step 3 Make a blueprint for your cards

Just fire up the program of your choice and start a brand new document or project. Because it is easy to use, we shall assume that we are working in Pages. Using Microsoft Word will be quite similar, albeit the names of certain buttons and functions may change.

To add a rectangle to your page, select “Insert Shape”. Adjust the rectangle’s dimensions to make it the right size for the trading card you want to make. Dimensions emerge when you move the rectangle to determine its size. Average trading card dimensions are 3.5 inches in height and 2.5 inches in width.

You may adjust the parameters of your rectangle until it is the same size as a trading card or playing card by holding it up to your screen for visual reference. For the best results, try this procedure when zoomed in to 150% of the original document size.

Make a substantial border around your rectangle shape before you begin cutting.

After deciding on a card’s overall layout, you may add text boxes to the design to showcase your character’s name and other pertinent information. Put your character’s name in a narrow text box towards the top of the card.

Create a little larger text box and place it near the bottom of your card. Information about your character or person should go here.

Make sure the name and information can be easily seen by using a clear typeface.

At this point, a square opening should have appeared in the center of your card; this will serve as the spot for your character’s artwork.

Step 4 Put your artwork into the templates

You know those pictures or artworks you put away before, right? The next step is to incorporate them into your existing layout. Browse to the location where your photos are stored and drop the first character or person into your layout.

By resizing the image with your mouse, you can make it fit within the square you’ve created. At this point, your card needs a title, a picture, and some text.

Step 5 design a whole page of templates, giving each one a unique appearance and personality

You may produce many cards from a single sheet of paper by copying and pasting your template. Your card template should print out 9 times on a single page if you’ve adhered to normal card dimensions. You can fit four or six card templates on a single sheet if you’ve used a bigger card size.

By selecting “Edit” in the top left corner, then “Select All,” and lastly “Copy,” you may copy and paste your whole template (the rectangular shape and the text fields combined).

Make sure each of your templates corresponds to a unique character or person by adding their names and relevant characteristics. Simply drop the character or person’s image into the appropriate spot on the templates and adjust the size as needed.

When you’ve finished with each card template in this way, you’ll be able to print off a whole page of individual trading cards.

Step 6 Make copies of your new trading cards

Give your cards the right weight by printing them on heavier paper. You can find this paper at any office supply store.

If you need printed materials but can’t do it at home, save the files on a flash drive or thumb drive and take them to a nearby printing business. To get the best results from your print work, choose heavier paper.

Step 7. Finalize your cards

The next step after printing your cards is to cut them out. You should take your time and be very careful as you cut around the boundaries. There are a variety of options available to you if you decide to have your cards laminated.

Check out Our Process to learn more about printing custom trading cards!