Business card matchbooks

The theme over on the Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge is "your favourite...".  I have so many favourite things, I hardly know where to start! Which is kinda odd when you think about it, cos if there's more than one, how can any of them be the favourite?  Anyway, I decided to be a little more specific and chose my favourite line of craft products, definitely Ranger's Distress range!

I had the idea for these business card matchbooks when I was sitting at my desk gazing out of the window, waiting for inspiration to strike (and some days, that can take a while!).  My eyes fell upon my Tonic mini perforator tool, which got me thinking about tear-off things and what things could you tear off and give to people.  Although I went with business cards this idea is only limited by your imagination!

You could make books of tear-off ATCs or twinchies, so that you always have some to hand ready to be traded - just remember to add an extra 1/4 inch or so to one end of your blanks to allow for the page to be glued into the matchbook.  Perforate at the 1/4 inch mark so that when you tear off your ATC or twinchie it's the right size, the extra 1/4 of blank card will stay in the matchbook.

OK, pay attention, here comes the tutorial part!

Let's say you're going to make a matchbook of tear-off ATCs.  Each card will be 3.5 x 2.5 inches with an extra 1/4 inch added on, so you'll have something like this -

Your cover will be the same width as your tear-off pages (or you could make them a little wider if you prefer) so with our pages sized as shown above, the cover would be like this (the dotted lines are score lines on the cover, not perforations) -

My covers were coloured with Distress Stains (so great for adding quick colour to a large area!) and then embossed in my Cuttlebug.  I sponged Distress Ink on them to highlight the embossed texture. You could make yours with patterned cardstock or decorate some plain covers to make them more personal!  I used a strong wet glue (PVA) to hold my pages in my cover, but something like Glossy Accents would also work well.

So there you have it, simple in concept, but so cool to have handy in your pocket or purse for the next time someone says "What's your blog address?".

Supplies I used included:

InLinkz.com

Our ever-generous sponsor Simon Says Stamp is offering a $50 gift voucher as the prize again this week, just make something for the challenge and you could the winner! The winner will be chosen at random from those who enter the challenge, so why not give it a try? At the very least why not head over to the Challenge Blog to see how the other members of the design team have interpreted this weeks theme! :)

Don't forget, Simon Says Stamp have a great Facebook page too!  Check them out here!