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Created: 08/16/2019
Updated: 12/13/2023

How To Make Your Own Playing Cards

by Chris Wasshuber

Introduction

If you have been struggling with making your own gaffed cards, printing your own deck of cards, or if you always wanted to put uncle Joe's face where the Jack of Spades is, then now this has become a lot easier and cheaper than ever before. The method I will describe here results in cards that are identical in look and feel to regular USPCC cards. And the best of all of this is that you can do this for a few cents per card right at home.

No more tedious splitting of cards. No more messing with glue or dry mount tissue. No wacky transfer images or other complicated printing methods that did not produce cards with the same look and feel to cards you buy in the store. (If you are interested in these traditional ways to make gaffed cards then read Craig Matsuoka's The Gaff Factory. It is the best publication on that subject.)

The problem with all known traditional methods is that they start with an already printed card. Either you have to split the card, cut it in pieces and then reassemble via some form of gluing, or you had to remove the overcoat (by sanding or with some kind of chemical solvent for example aceton) that would then allow you to print your own design on the card. These methods are messy, take a lot of time, and are quite limited in what kind of cards you can make.

air-cushion surfaceWhen I started to tackle this problem it became quickly clear that the only way to really improve the DIY making of playing cards was to start with a blank uncoated card stock on which one can easily print with laser or inkjet printer. The only problem was that you can't buy playing card stock at Staples or your local office supply shop. So I went on a mission to find out if one could buy playing card cardboard. And in particular I wanted to find the same cardboard that USPCC used including their 'air-cushion finish' which is used for their line of Bicycle cards (see photo to the right). Bicycles are the most popular brand. If the intention is to print gaffed cards for magic purposes then it better be identical to the Bicycle dimpled surface and snaps and looks exactly like it.

To make a long story short, I found the source. The caveat is that you can't buy a few hundred sheets. You have to buy a 'truckload'. And I mean this literally not figuratively. I decided to buy ONE truckload, break it open, and sell small quantities to people who want to print their own playing cards or gaffed cards that look and feel just like the real ones.

And once I had the right cardboard I made breakthroughs both in coating cards and in cutting cards. The first breakthrough was on the cutting side. You can do cutting in many different ways but if you want to combine your self-made cards with store bought cards, or if you want to produce an entire deck or perhaps even many decks of cards, then the cutting has to be accurate. Otherwise your self-made card will not blend with regular cards and your deck will look and feel wrong if every card has a slightly different size.

My investigation and testing resulted in a perfect solution for the home maker of playing cards. You need two tools. A card cutter and a corner rounder. These two tools allow you to efficiently cut cards to perfect size with perfect corner rounding.

The remaining piece of the puzzle was the coating or varnish of a card. The coating protects the card as well as gives it the right slip to allow easy dealing, fanning and shuffling. And just as with the cardboard I went right to the source professional card manufacturers use. I found a supplier of playing card coating and I found a cheap and easy way to apply the coating.

Job done. Now we can print, coat and cut cards to perfection in a DIY process and produce perfectly looking high quality cards. When I do show my cards to friends and colleagues and tell them that I printed these cards myself their first reaction is disbelieve. They think I try to pull their leg. They check if it is not April 1st fools day. They simply can't believe it. But it is a reality now. You can print anything from a few cards to setting up an entire business printing cards for sale.

5 self-made cards
This is a photo of five cards I made myself. They have standard faces and Bicycle backs. The ace of spades has been modified - all text has been removed as proof that I am not taking a picture of store bought cards. The purpose of this photo is to show that they look exactly like regular cards. If you use the process I am outlining here you will be able to do the same.

custom deck
This is a photo of a commemorative custom deck I made for my parents for their 70th birthday and 45th wedding anniversary. At the bottom left you see the custom back which is a modified Bicycle back. Next to it two self-printed Bicycle backs one in blue and one in red. The deck is not a full deck only from 9-10, J, Q, K, A, plus 3 special cards, one with a magic square.

Cardboard Structure

High quality playing card cardboard has a specific structure. It consists of two layers of cardboard which are glued together with a black glue. The blackness of the glue comes typically from graphite which is added to the glue. The exact composition of this glue is typically a trade secret but its purpose is to achieve total opacity of the card as well as to give the card the correct snap and feel.

Below you can see three cross-sections taken with a digital microscope at 180x magnification. The left most is from a Bicycle card. The middle one is our Lybrary.com cardstock and the right image is from a Piatnik card, the Austrian card manufacturer.

cross section Bicycle card cross section Lybrary.com cardstock cross section Piatnik card

You can clearly see that all have two layers of cardboard which are held together by a black layer in the center. This is the black glue that assures opacity.

What you will need

The Basic Process

  1. Design a card in your favorite drawing program or with my free online card designer. Another way to start is to scan in some faces and backs and modify them with a drawing program. A cleaner way is to start with our 52 Standard American card faces as vector files. You can easily modify these graphics with any vector graphics design tool like the free Inkscape or the not free and not so cheap Adobe Illustrator.
  2. Print it out on the playing card stock. In most cases you will have to run the sheet through your printer twice to print front and back.
  3. Coat the sheet front and back with our genuine playing card coating. For some applications you can even skip this step. The cards particularly when printed with a laser printer do look already great without overcoat.
  4. Cut the cards from the sheet. I recommend and use myself the KardKutter [has been discontinued due to manufacturer going out of business] and a corner rounder. But you can certainly use other methods, too.
  5. Impress your friends with your self-made playing cards.
That's it. There is not much more to it. The only step that is a bit messy is the overcoating. But for some applications you can skip this step. The card stock has a natural sheen and unless you need to do extensive sleight of hand with these cards or want to mix and match with regular cards you could do without overcoat. They will not last as long as the coated cards but now that you can print them out for mere cents it doesn't really matter.

Printing Details

Most of the printing I have done so far was on my Brother HL-4070CDW color laser printer and my Canon iP100 mobile inkjet printer. One key setting in the print driver is the paper setting. Playing card cardboard is a pretty heavy cardboard. And if the settings are not correct the toner will not fuse or not fuse completely to the cardboard if you are using a laser printer. The fusing is typically done with heat. A thick cardboard absorbs more heat leaving less for the toner to melt and fuse into the surface of the sheet.

Therefore, if you use a laser printer, make sure to select in the print driver 'heavy cardboard' or some similar setting for the paper quality. In my laser printer the options that work well are 'Thicker Paper' and 'Postcard'. Otherwise the toner will not completely fuse to the cardboard. This is crucial. The prints will be unusable otherwise. My Brother HL-4070CDW works but it is used outside its manufacturers specs. And therefore sometimes if the printer is not warmed up properly the fusing is not complete. Upgrading from a consumer class printer for $200-$400 to a business class printer for around $1000 will improve the situation because these printers are built to handle thicker cardboard.

How do you check if toner has not been completely fused? If you run your finger over a printed area you will feel the loose toner. It feels rougher than a properly fused area. And you will get some toner on your fingers. You will also see faint ghost images in areas that should be white. With some experience you can tell by simply looking at the print.

There is one important thing I found out. Do not print directly from Inkscape. For whatever reason Inkscape does not pass on the paper settings to the printer. This means that your 'Thicker Paper' setting will not take effect and your toner will not fuse completely leaving you with an unusable print. There is an easy fix to this. Save your design to PDF, then open the PDF in Adobe or AdobeReader and print from there. Problem solved. The tell tale signs for this printing issue to happen are that the paper emerges from the printer faster than it should. And that the 'preferences' window does not properly close after you selected the 'Thicker Paper' setting.

For inkjet printers you typically have to wait until the ink is dry. Some inks don't bond well with the cardboard. In general pigmented inks work well, and dye based inks are to be avoided. I had good success with a cheap HP 6122 (except paper handling is a mess with most HP printers) and a cheap Epson Stylus NX415 printer, but complete failure with an expensive Epson Stylus Pro 3800. The reason is that the expensive 6 cartridges or more Epson printers use dye based inks. Two customers reported very good results with a HP Photosmart C5540. Recently I had very good success with a Canon iP100 mobile inkjet printer. It prints very nicely and particularly the alignment of the print is great. The best settings I found out so far are:

For more information on pigment versus dye inks see www.oddparts.com/ink/faq19.htm.

A colleague reported that the Xerox solid ink printers (he used a Xerox Phaser 8560/DN) do work very well and the ink bonds to the cardboard perfectly. The duplexer does not work with the thick cardboard and you will have to print front and back separately. This printer costs ~$700 new.

Probably the best and lowest cost solution to get started is to use the services of a print shop. I had Kinkos print 10 sheets front and back on a color copier and the result was wonderful - beautiful colors. I think these color copiers use a chemical to fuse the toner, not heat, which makes the print quality very good. I paid $1.18 for each printed side.

Other printer alternatives. I have no direct experience with them but searching online, reading reviews and articles I found these interesting candidates. One of the main issues with laser printers is being able to handle heavy cardboard.

Color Matching

In many cases you will not need to color match your print because you are printing out all cards for your trick - gaffed and not gaffed. Since it is now much easier to print an entire deck of cards color matching has become much less of a concern than it was in the past. However, if you need to color match your prints, then read on for some tips of how to do that.

One note before you dive into color matching. Have the deck you want to color match in front of you. USPCC is known to have a weak color quality control. You can find decks with very different colors. In some cases the red is already more a pink and the yellow can be a deep orange, blue can exhibit various degrees of darkness, etc. That means there is no universal 'USPCC red' or 'USPCC blue'.

Brute force method
The least sophisticated method is simply to try as many shades and variations until you get close enough. The best is to do this systematically and print out sheets of slightly different colored squares and compare to the color on the card you want to match.

Color profiling
The pros use sophisticated measurement equipment to define colors and measure color profiles of printers. There are services that do that for you at reasonable prices (take a look at www.cathysprofiles.com who is measuring profiles at $35 a piece). Another alternative is to buy a Colormunki (www.colormunki.com). The Colormunki is a spectrophotometer that helps a great deal in matching colors. It costs about $350 and is therefore not something everybody will immediately buy. The pros who need to repeatedly color match will want to get one. For the rest we can provide some help - read on.

Frank Lehmann was so kind to measure four Bicycle decks from different print runs with his Colormunki. The results are tabulated below.

sRGB Values using Colormonki Photo
deckWhiteRedYellowBlue
Bicycle blue back #1226, 226, 224193, 38, 48198, 145, 10, 82, 143
Bicycle blue back #2226, 227, 224193, 38, 48211, 156, 00, 77, 127
Bicycle red back #1224, 225, 223190, 30, 42205, 167, 9434, 115, 167
Bicycle red back #2227, 227, 224191, 27, 38191, 141, 00, 98, 158
Lybrary cardboard227, 229, 229

Please note that the yellow and blue measurements are probably somewhat off because there is not a large enough area of blue or yellow on a playing card which allows a clean measurement. Nevertheless, I think the numbers should be reasonably close.

As you can see the USPCC colors differ from deck to deck. But Frank's measurements do give you an idea where to start. This set of numbers is only half the story because your printer is not yet profiled or calibrated to really print out the colors you tell him to print out. Nevertheless, with these measurements we have at least defined one side of the problem and specified the colors we need to match.

Coating Cards

The best time to coat cards is after you have printed them and before you cut them out. Our playing card coating can be applied with a hard rubber roller or Brayer as they are typically called, a Preval sprayer or an airbrush. You can find 8" wide rollers for about $10 in your local art supply store or order it online at various stores. Get a legal sized clip board (the letter sized are too short) or any other board with a flat smooth surface. Put first a layer or scrap paper or newspaper on the board to absorb any excess coating. Then tape or clip your printed cardboard on top of it.

Now you take the bottle of playing card coating, open the spout and dispense a line of coating across the entire top width of the cardboard. I actually put a tape across the top edge of the cardboard and dispense the coating on the tape. This prevents that too much liquid gets absorbed by the cardboard before it can be spread out causing the cardboard to get wavy. After the coating as been dispensed on the top I take the roller and with one medium pressure stroke roll the coating over the entire sheet. A kitchen towel is used to clean the roller for the next coating sequence. While I clean the roller the coating dries. Once the coating has been spread thin over the cardboard it dries very fast. I typically wait no more than a minute or two and then repeat the same process for the sheet's back side.

For those that don't mind a little project I suggest to build the following coating machine.

The nifty double sided coating machine
I figured out how to build for a few bucks a nifty manual coating machine that coats a sheet of cardboard on both sides. The photos shown are from my first prototype built from two 4" hard rubber hand rollers, and some hardware taken from the Vex robotics kit.

coating machine front view

coating machine top view

Above you can see the nifty coating machine. Two rollers are positioned next to each other. The long screws are there to adjust the pressure with which the two rollers are pressed together. Only a small amount of pressure is necessary. Essentially the rollers kiss each other. Below you can see how a piece of cardboard (here a 4.25" wide piece) is fed through the coating machine.

coating machine with cardboard.

To coat the cardboard a small amount of coating liquid is put into the groove formed by the two kissing rollers. The liquid will stay in that groove and not run down, because the rollers touch each other. Then a sheet of cardboard is inserted from the top into the groove between the rollers which holds the coating liquid. First push the cardboard down and then pull the cardboard through the rollers from below. This will uniformly coat the cardboard on both sides. It works great. For easy cleaning the machine can be opened up as shown below.

coating machine opened

My next step is to build this machine from two 8" rollers so that one can feed an entire A4 cardboard sheet through it. The cost of one 8" hand roller is typically $10. The hardware I am using is great for prototyping but is not necessary. Two wooden boards to which the rollers are mounted and a few screws should be sufficient.

Preval Sprayer
You can also spray-on the coating. A cheap way to do this is with a so called 'Preval sprayer'. This is essentially an 'airbrush in a can'. It consists of a pressurized spray can that has a diptube sticking out from its bottom. A glass jar filled with coating is screwed to the bottom of the sprayer. This sprayer can be bought for $5 at Home Depot or for a little more via Amazon.com. Follow the instructions on the packaging. You will also have to remove the filter at the bottom of the diptube. Experiment with dilution ratios or use the coating as is.

Airbrushing the coating
A card maker colleague shared the following recipe for airbrushing the coating. He used 1 part water to 2 parts lybrary.com playing card coating to somewhat dilute the coating. Then he used an Iwata Eclipse HP-BS airbrush gravity top feeder a little more than 1/2 tsp to a side. With an airbrush you will achieve a much better and finer control of your coating.

Other methods that have failed
Until I found the right coating liquid and developed the method explained above I tried a number of other things. Nothing really worked well, but I know that there are alternative coating methods out there - I just don't know them. If you know of any other method to coat playing cards please let me know. I am curious. For completeness sake here are all the things I tried and didn't work:

A few more resources I stumbled on that you might find of interest if you want to do your own coating experiments:

Cutting Options

When cutting cards there is one other important aspect to consider. Every paper or cardboard has a fiber direction. Bending, cutting, tearing and creasing along the fiber direction is easier than across the fiber direction. More importantly the spring of a card depends on how the fibers run. Typically sheets are cut with the fiber running along the long edge. Our playing card cardboard has the fiber direction parallel to the long edge. Playing cards also have most of the time the fiber of the cardboard run parallel to the long edge of the card. This means that you want to make sure that the long edges of your cards are parallel to the long edges of the cardboard sheet.

To achieve this you could use a 9-up arrangement, or if that leaves too narrow margins around the cards for your printer and cutter setup you can use a 4-up configuration.

9-up 4-up

If you don't mind how the paper fiber runs or if you deliberately want to have the fibers run across you can also use an 8-up configuration with the sheet in landscape.

8-up

Notes:

Aligning Print and Cut

One of the challenges is to align print (register front and backside) with the cut. The biggest variable here is the printer itself. The alignment and repeatability of a typical desktop printer is not that great. With my Brother laser printer I measured a misalignment of about 0.5 mm. The printer does not pull in the paper perfectly straight but slightly tilted. This causes the margins on the bottom of the sheet to become slightly asymmetric.

For example, I printed out a block of 9 cards, 3 x 3, perfectly centered on the sheet. When I measure the margin on the left and right for the first top row I get precisely 10.5 mm on both sides. When I do the same measurement on the bottom for the last row I get 10 mm and 11 mm. So the printer drew in the sheet slightly tilted, causing the print to be slightly skewed on the page.

Top and bottom margin were also not symmetric. On the top I get 15 mm on the bottom 18 mm. As long as you feed the sheet for front- and backside print with the same leading edge into the printer, this is not an issue. To facilitate this I make a dot on the leading edge of the sheet - the edge that enters the printer first. This way I know how to insert it for the backside print.

Another test you can do is to print front and back and then use a needle to pierce through the cardboard and check how much off the front and backside prints are. With my printer the misalignment is not that big. In the worst case I can discard the last row of cards and use the top 6 cards which are aligned very well. And every now and then the print on the front and back is perfectly aligned.

paper guides of card cutterAfter you have printed a sheet on the front and on the back and perhaps coated it with a clear coat you need to align the paper guides of your card cutter with your print. For this you will have to sacrifice one or two sheets. First print out two identical sheets. Put the first one into the cutter and observe where the cuts come out. Then adjust the paper guides for the cutter accordingly. Make sure to feed the paper always in the same orientation and with the same leading edge into the cutter. Here the mark on one of the edges mentioned above will be very helpful. If the print is not exactly centered, which in most cases it will be, you will see large changes in cutting position for inconsistently inserted sheets.

Designing Cards

There are many tools and ways to design custom cards or gaff or trick cards. One that is free, easy to use and specific to designing playing cards is my online card designer. You can also use the following process that has worked well for me and produces very good results. If you want to avoid a lot of the legwork then you can also start with my design pack of all 52 faces of standard American cards as vector graphic files.
  1. Unless you want to design something from scratch it is best to start with an existing face or back design. Buy a fresh deck of cards and scan the card. I suggest to use 600dpi and true color but the range of possibilities is quite large and depends on what you ultimately want to do. I would stay away from digital cameras because they introduce all kinds of distortions.
  2. Use a paint program or a photo editing tool to clean up your scan. Often white does not come out a clean white and sometimes you want to crop and correct certain aspects of your scan. Save as PNG, TIFF or BMP file. These are better formats than JPG. JPG is a lossy compression format and does not reproduce sharp lines well.
  3. Combine or alter your scans to produce a trick card. The possibilities are endless.
  4. Staying in a pixelated world makes life easy but it limits your design options and the quality of the end product. I recommend to convert your bitmap to a vector graphic. Once a vector graphic, you can scale, stretch, bend, combine etc. your design at hearts length without loss of quality. It also makes it possible to separate elements of the design into colors to quickly change and tune colors. This is important if you want to match your trick card to an existing pack of cards. USPCC has a lousy quality control on their colors and you can buy cards with quite different shades of colors. To avoid having your gimmicked card stand out like a sore thumb tuning colors is sometimes necessary.
    I use a very nifty and free tool, Inkscape, to convert a bitmap to a vectorized graphic. It is a great tool that I can recommend if you want to do a good job designing your cards. If you have never used a vector graphic program then you will need to schedule some time to explore the possibilities of this tool. It is not hard to figure out what it can do.

Ideas of what to print

The boundaries are only set by your own imagination. If you do make some cool cards please let me know.

Card Boxes

I have not yet been able to locate a company that sells white (unprinted) tuckbox style card boxes. Some magic dealers sell empty Bicycle boxes for more than a box filled with cards - meaning a regular deck. Why would you buy for $2 or $3 an empty box when you can get for ~$1 a complete deck, cards and box combined? The best option is to make your own. And the best tool to do so was pointed out to me by Sandy Singer. It is the Super Delux Tuckbox Template Maker by Craig P. Forbes. It is incredible and allows you to specify the size of your deck, the bottom style and in an instant a PDF is made available for you to print, cut, fold and glue into a perfect card box.

Other Card Making Related Tips and Tricks

Future Plans

Replies

Mike Carambat (12/13/2023)

Yeah, finding playing card stock is insanely difficult. I've been designing and manufacturing my own board games for over 7 years and still haven't been able to find the perfect solution. So far, the best I've come up with is using two-sided dry-erase posterboard. It feels nice and thick and has a very nice crisp glossy finish, doesn't tear easily and can be purchased quickly at HobbyLobby. I run it on a color laser copier, or my own personal Ricoh in a pinch. The toner holds up pretty well over time, but I have noticed over much use, the toner will begin to flake a bit. As such, I may start coating my cards, but it hasn't been a big problem, and none of my customers have ever complained. The dry-erase posterboard comes in inexpensive 22x28 sheets which can be cut down to 6 letter sized sheets. I was using a large format cutting machine to cut the cards by hand, but have recently bought a Sizzix Pro Die Cutter for about $330 and had a custom die made for about $220 from www.customshapepros.com. My custom die is made for the Letter sized stock, and allows for (8) 2.5x3.5 edge beveled cards with .125" bleeds. What's nifty about the custom shape pros is they give you the option of compressible pins to keep your paper registered on the die as it runs through or an acrylic see-through die you can align by hand. With this setup, I should be able to run 3-4 sheets at once before I start to see edge beveling. We'll see how it goes :)

Andreas Erni (03/13/2023)

Hi Chris Your articles are still great knowledge sources. I have a few questions. I want to be able to print my own playing cards but I saw that the blank uncut sheets are unavailable at the time. Will it be restocked? If not is there an alternative paper anywhere out there that you can recommend and one can buy in low quantities? If this is not the case eighter, would you recommend to glue and coat the paper by yourself? Do you know a good way to print on double blank cards (already cut)? Thanks!

Kent Suarez (11/22/2022)

Re: "I have not yet been able to locate a company that sells white (unprinted) tuckbox style card boxes." I have purchased them at an online sales site called Shopee in Taiwan, from a seller with the shop name Magic999. You could contact them to ask where they buy theirs in bulk; use Google Translate if needed. It's not perfect, but it often gets the point across.

Chris Wasshuber (08/25/2021)

No, you cannot assume that. I have not tried the Pixma and I have no idea if the ink works regardless of if it is pigment- or dye-based. You have to try it. I don't know if it works or not.

Marshall Bryant (08/25/2021)

Question, I am trying to make my own trading cards. I have a Canon PIXMA pro inkjet printer. I have no idea if the CLI-8 ink is dye or pigment based. Is it reasonable for me to assume that I can buy 80 sheets and the coating and just be off to the races? I'm also looking into printing services but they are expensive.

Chris Wasshuber (07/02/2021)

I have no idea if polishing a coated card with #0000 steel wool makes it slide better. I doubt it, but I have never tried it. Try it and let us know how it went.

Phillip Dennis (07/02/2021)

I was considering Kamar Varnish to recoat a card with an erased joker. Based on the observation that as the varnished cards are used they spread more easily perhaps polishing the card using #0000 grade steel wool would do the trick?

Ryan Thomas (04/20/2018)

Hi Chris, I was wondering if I could get a custom deck made and if so how much would you charge me per 52 cards? Kind Regards Ryan

Mike McMullan (11/19/2017)

Hi Chris I've always used Bicycle Bridge Cards but unfortunately due the popularity of Poker Sized Cards the supply of Magicians Gaffed/Special Cards are now hard to find. I do have a source for the printing of gaffed/special decks - can I create my own gaffed face designs and use standard bicycle bridge back images to do so as this is the only alternative I have.

Christopher Vega (10/10/2017)

Hey Chris I'd love to know if I could just print my cards out on the blank sheets and throw them into a card protector sleeve without needing to worry about coating them. I'm just looking to add a playing card feel to the cards of my game, but would rather it be as simple of a project (and budget) as possible since I need to create a 120 card deck for kitchen table play. I also own a HP Laserjet Pro 200 and would like to get your input on if I'd made a horrible investment or if it'd workout for this project? -Thank you and best regards

Franck Gastel (10/09/2016)

Hello Christoph. I want to make my cards but would need to insert a RFID tag inside. If I understand well, the paper you offer are already with the black glue in the middle. Do you have an idea of how I could get the paper without the black glue, and my nfc tag, and glue them myself ? Is there any way to get the Air-Cushion finish paper without the glue and therefor thinner ?

Christoph Wasshuber (01/14/2016)

The Bicycle backdesign is trademarked and therefore I can't provide it to you. Depending on how you intend to use it you may still be able to use it, but you will need to do it yourself.

Anton van Helden (01/14/2016)

Hi Chris, do you have a graphic for the back of a Bicycle card. I am trying to find one to use with a gaff I have designed...but I really need the back. Thanks to you I have the faces!! :)

Amit Mohnani (05/12/2015)

Hello

That's really amazing you printed your cards & definitely its not difficult creating playing cards at home as we think. Well you put nice efforts, thanks for sharing.
Danny Wensley (01/11/2014)

curious if a Brother MFC printer would still work for this printing process??? I'm assuming so but just making sure. thanks!

Tom Bone (11/03/2013)

I ran across this site if you wanted to get boxes for your custom cards:
https://www.makeplayingcards.com/promotional/card-cases-boxes.html
haven't gotten anything from there yet so "caveat emptor!"

dennis erickson (07/19/2013)

Hi I was wondering how thick the card-stock you sell is? I am looking to make a few homemade copies of some magic the gathering cards i have. I think the thickness of regular bicycles might be a bit too thin. Do you have any thicker card stock or know of a place i could get some?

Freddie Duran (01/09/2013)

Hello, I'm in the process of developing my own card game. Something similar to the card game known as "Magic". Its kind of a nerds card game because it consist of orcs and monster creatures and wizards and such. I just wanted to know if buying the playable card paper was available and I came across you and this website. My first question is: How much will all the supplies you offer to make cards cost me ??? Second Question is: I noticed some of the things needed to make a custom deck is unavailable for purchase, so is it still unavailable to purchase from you ??? Third question is: Can you give me a direct source to where I can purchase the unavailable items you have listed unavailable ??? I may have further questions upon reply but thank you reading this messege. contact info: [email protected]

Steven Gerrits (07/07/2012)

Hey Chris, What a great article this is! The card designer is great, however if I want to export normal pip-cards (for further editing in Gimp for example) the export fails. Face-cards are all great. but just 2-10 gives me a fail every time. no matter what suit. I've tried on PC, I've tried on MAC, same: no luck. Is this a knows issue? At the bottom of the article you write you want to improve the free gaff-design tool. maybe there are others out there that can help too? any suggestions?

Marty Ransford (05/01/2011)

I've wanted to make my own gaffs and specially designed cards for magic routines for about 20 years. I've hand made a lot of gaffs, but no more. Thanks!

Douglas Gourlay (03/03/2011)

Hi there, Thanks for taking the time to offer concise and useful information on this topic. I'm in the process of lookingat using CNC (computer numeric control) to cut specialty cards. I've purchased a Cricut Expression cutter system that is typically used in the crafting industry. I'm not completely confident in the accuracy of the machine (despite the unit being a computer controlled cutting blade). The new systems are now combined printer/cutters. For that reason, the 24" Expression Units are being sold off at much discounted prices. Costco has pretty impressive packages on sale. Another system, CraftROBO has the ability to self align based on registration marks printed on the sheets. The trade off is a very sparse x-y computer cutter. Any thoughts on this approach would be appreciated. Thanks Doug

Heather Barnes (01/24/2011)

Hello, I am in the process of creating a new custom card business and it would be great to talk to you if your time allows. Is there a good time to reach you? I could provide my contact information if you would like. It would help to talk a bit more about Die Cutter recommendations, and the card coating process. I could also share a different way to use customized cards. Thanks, Heather

Wilhelm Eberhard (11/04/2010)

You may want to create the cards described in Karl Fulves' book "Ellis Stanyon's Best Card Tricks". Check chapter 9: Card Tricks Using Special Printed Cards and chapter 10: Mechanical and Other Prepared Cards. There is no need to print you own double face and double back cards. You may peel cards, to create these ones. You may find instructions to do it in Expert Card Technique, by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braué. Just check Part 5, Miscellany, Peeling Cards. Note: use spray adhesive instead of rubber cement. It is much better, but it was not available when the book was published and, therefore, it is not mentioned in the book.

James (07/01/2010)

Chris, Do you still recomend the Brother 4070, or is there another model you'd recomend these days? Thanks!

Chris Wasshuber (05/20/2010)

Yes, Keith, I could offer a very similar cardboard that has a smooth surface. Actually I was thinking about that for a while and at some point I am quite sure I will be able to supply it. But at the moment I am concentrating my resources on other parts of the card making process, namely the design phase where I want to offer a free online design tool for gaffed cards.

Chris Wasshuber (04/28/2010)

Best is to go to ebay and search for 'die cutter'. You will find some choices. Or Google it. There are several who supply these die cutters. However, be careful about the exact size of these cutters. They are typically not exactly poker size.

Ben Reynolds (04/28/2010)

Hi i was wondering where i can find a die cutter to cut the size of the playing cards