Using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator is the easiest way to design and format your cards for printing all in one place. Gimp is a good free alternative to Adobe programs that has a lot of the same capabilities.
For example, you could use pictures of your friends and family for the face cards in different suits of a standard playing card deck to create a fun custom deck.
You can search online for a variety of actual card back designs, or any other images you want to use, and load these into whatever editing program you are using to create the backs of the cards.
This is a good idea for a custom gift that you can give to friends or family. You should only use a max of 5 photos for a regular deck of playing cards. This way, people can’t memorize which card has which photo while you are playing!
You can get cardstock at an office supply or print shop. You can use this technique to create any kind of custom playing cards you want, from normal poker-style cards, to homemade card games.
As a rule of thumb, you should be able to fit 9 cards on a piece of cardstock, but you can make the cards smaller or bigger if you like. Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop are examples of programs you can use to format the cards, or use Gimp as a free alternative. You could even use a business card template to format the playing cards in one of these programs.
Many print shops also offer graphic design services, and should be able to format the cards to print for you if you don’t have the software or know how to do it at home.
Make sure to orient the cardstock so that the back design prints the way you want it to. You can run a regular piece of printing paper through the printer first to test how it prints.
Alternatively, you can put some light-colored lines in between the cards in the design file on your computer before you print them.
Make sure the height of the cards is as equal as possible, as this will help them shuffle better. The width is not as important. Use the guide on the paper cutter to help you make uniform cuts. If you don’t have a paper cutter, you can use a ruler and a utility knife to cut along the lines. You can also use an exacto knife to cut paper.
You can get a corner rounding tool from a scrapbooking store.
