Unique hand painted business cards

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Each one of Strode Design Studios business cards is unique, hand-painted, glued together and cut. No two are the same.

The latest batch of the business cards was painted with Van Gogh watercolors in shades of indigo blue, sepia and earth tones, and my favorite gold watercolor.

Business cards often get taken, lost and forgotten. There is a lot of effort put into designing them, but it's hard to stand out in the sea of cool design.

I wanted my business cards to mirror my business model, which is being creative, unique and innovative, combined together in a signature design.

First step is to have an idea. To me, this is the simple part, as I am constantly filled with ideas, inspiration and creativity. Watercolors are my big passion, I love how unpredictable they are, the way they blend into each other, and the way the color changes as it dries.

For this series of business cards I used Van Gogh watercolors, primary Indigo blue (533), and same color mixed with black (708). For secondary colors I used sepia and earth tones (409, 227, 411) which combined perfectly with indigo.

I painted the design on larger paper, A4, not on small business card dimensions. Only after it's completely done I'm cutting it to correct size and finally see what the design actually looks like. I love the element of surprise, where will the cut be? Which color will rule, what shape? There are never two of the same.

After the design dried, I added my favorite part - gold watercolor (802). Gold details make the paper come alive, they add the dose of elegance, something special to the design and are so fun to look at different angles of light.

When the artwork is done, before gluing and cutting, I scan it so it can be used digitaly, on website, social media or in this post for instance.

The other side, the one with Strode Studios logo and information is printed on high quality 220 gsm paper. The design is painted on 250 gsm Fabriano mixed media paper.

Two papers are glued together by plain stick glue, and nicely pressed together. After the glue is dry, I cut everything up and finally see the result of painting. How each card looks like.

For this batch I filmed the processes painting and making my original, unique business cards, so if you are interested take a look at the video below:

Strode Design Studios business cards

Watercolor illustration & graphic design by Ana Šparavec