Guess who just got in their fancy new boat cards??? And we LOVE them! So we’re sharing them here on the blog of course.
“Boat card? What the heck is that?” …you (non-cruisers) may ask. Well, cruisers exchange boat cards. Or so we’ve heard (we are not “official” just yet). And if you don’t have one to hand back, you’ll get funny looks.
They pretty much serve the same purpose as corporate business cards, but with boaty info instead…think boat name, boat make, crew members, email address, website, etc.
Even though we aren’t officially cruising, Jereme and I have both encountered numerous situations in the past few months where having a card totally would have come in handy. We’ve met so many awesome folks down at the Naples City Dock and elsewhere who we would’ve loved to give one to… I’m kinda sad we didn’t make these sooner!
Being the creative one on this ship, designing our boat cards was right up my alley! 🙂
I tried to keep our card design simple yet bold (or so I like to think). I really wanted our faces and our beautiful boat on the card somehow, but (surprisingly being the photo geek I am) did not want to use an actual photograph. Instead, I had a super talented artist on Etsy create a digital illustration for us. I loved the illustration so much, I ended up designing two very similar card styles — one with the illustration of us, and the other with just the boat. They’re pretty much the same layout, just with certain information moved around a bit.
We had our cards printed on matte card stock with rounded edges through one of the professional labs I use for my photography business (only because its super easy for me to order online through their system and I know the quality of the product I’ll receive). And, we are thrilled with the way our cards turned out!
Now, we just need to start cruising so we can hand a few out! 😉
>>Thanks for visiting LAHOWIND sailing blog! We’d love for you to get to know us and follow our story as we attempt to navigate a whole new world of sailing and cruising the Bahamas + Caribbean.
What a creative idea using the digital illustration, I love it!
Thanks Jackie!!! Any chance I get to be creative with boat stuff, I sure do try. 😉 -Kim
Very nice job on the cards. You definitely have an “artsy” side.
We look forward to collecting one from you someday in a sunny and sandy part of the world.
Mark and Cindy
s/v Cream Puff
http://www.creampuff.us
ps ~ thanks for adding the “subscribe by email”. This way we can be sure to not miss anything.
Thanks guys! We definitely look forward to exchanging cards and meeting up again some day. 🙂 -Kim
LOVE THEM! When I created ours I wanted to keep ours ridiculously simple that now that I am actually using them they are too simple and lacking very important information (our name, or boat name for instance). I have so many that I cannot justify just making new ones so I am constantly hand writing our info on them. Maybe I should just make a stamp. sigh…
which etsy artist did you use? I used to hire people from etsy all the time back in my professional life 🙂
Thanks so much Kelley! I was debating on getting a self-inking stamp too. I’m thinking it might come in handy when we need to put our info on forms or whatever else. But I haven’t brought myself to purchasing one for that purpose just yet. I used LuvFirstSight for the digital illustration. I was really happy with the price (compared to some others on etsy) and her willingness to tweak a few things for me after seeing the first proof. 🙂