Business Card Holders

Tomorrow I have the awesome opportunity to attend Snap!, a conference for creative bloggers held here in Salt Lake. This is my first time going since I am still really new to blogging and I am really excited about it, and pretty nervous too. I am not a not a very outgoing person so going someplace by myself with a lot of people that I don't know is a pretty big step outside of my comfort zone. Even though there is a part of me that is really freaking out at the idea I really am very excited to go. One thing that I needed to do to get ready was order business cards. A couple of weeks ago I got my box of business cards in the mail. It was pretty crazy to open it up and look at them. It made me feel all official, I have business cards that say my name on them and have my information. It was kind of a weird thing to see.

Anyway, I looked at this big box of cards and decided that I needed to find a way to carry them with me to the conference. I didn't want to lug the whole box around and I didn't want to just throw some in my bag where they would get all bent up and ruined. I kind of had an idea in my mind of what I wanted to make and my first thought was to try to come up with a pattern myself but then I thought, why not check online and see if someone has already made a tutorial for that. After a quick google search I found exactly what I was looking for. It saved me the trial and error of trying to make my own pattern. The tutorial I used was from the Crafty Cupboard. 

It was pretty much exactly what I had pictured in my head. The only changes that I made were because I wanted to use stuff I had on hand. I didn't have fusible fleece so I used some lightweight interfacing that I had and it worked perfectly. I also didn't have any spare hair elastics so I just used some cord type elastic that I had. I would definitely recommend the hair elastics over the cord elastic because the fact that it is looped will hold it in better, I just didn't have any on hand and didn't want to go to the store so I used what I had and it worked okay. The other thing I will say is that when you topstitch you want to do it as close to the edge as you can because so that you have room to fit your cards in the pockets. The tutorial says you can fit 24 cards in each one. I only got 20 cards in each one of mine but my 1/4 inch seam allowances might have been just a teensy bit more than a 1/4 inch. 

All in all I was pretty happy with the way they turned out and it was a good way to use up some scraps. I think that the funnest part was picking out buttons to match. I have a big jar of buttons that were given to me by two of husband's grandmas. It is always fun to dig through all of those old buttons to find the perfect one for whatever project I am working on.

If you want to make your own business card holders you should definitely check out this tutorial from The Crafty Cupboard.