These custom trading cards are perfect for end of season parties and can be tailored to any sport! My son is obsessed with trading cards- new ones and older ones. We go to an antique store a few towns over that has bins of vintage baseball, football and basketball trading cards. The gentleman who owns the store will spend an hour going through the cards with him to find local treasures (Joe Montana, Willie Mays) and other cherished collectibles like Lou Gehrig, Michael Jordan and more. So when I wanted to celebrate his birthday last year, I created his own enlarged trading cards (I shared the how-to in this post here). Recently, a friend wanted to commemorate the end of flag football season with something different than the usual trophies. So I helped her make something similar to the enlarged custom trading cards that was more scaled to an actual trading card. I also bought frames similar to something we got from Oracle park when my son make trading cards there at a San Francisco Giants game.
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Creating Your Custom Trading Cards
I have made the custom trading cards simple to personalize. I offer a free template at the bottom of this post. In order to create your own you will need a Canva account. This is free to sign up for and use. Once you have signed up, access the template and start customizing the trading cards. You can edit the colorway of the cards, remove the team logo that I have and add your own. A little hack that I like to use. I will copy a team logo and paste it onto my Canva project and then use the colors from the logo to change the card frame colors. Also, while you can use the Canva app on your phone, it is so much easier to use the desktop version at times. The hardest part of this project is when you are trying to position a logo and it uploads into the frame as a photo. In this case, the undo button is your friend. When moving logos, etc onto the card, do not let go until you see it is not in the frame. Sometimes I will move the card instead of the logo and problem solved (you just need to play with the positioning of the layers so you can see what you are doing). If you are a visual person, I walk through Canva tutorials on my Instagram.
I have sized this to print as an 8×10 photo at your local photo print shop. Make sure that before you print you look for a coupon code online. I never print without one!
Troubleshooting
I have run into some issues with Canva that I thought it would be easier to explain here. When trying to make shapes white- they gray out. I have no idea why. I searched online and found that if you go to edit, choose duotone, then custom and bring down the highlights and shadows both to set to white (top left corner on color scale)- you will have your desired color.
If you order the frames I used for the cards you will want to shrink down the font in the name a bit to allow for it to not be blocked by the magnets. You can choose a frame without magnets too, but we liked having an option they could put on a fridge or somewhere else!
Framing your Trading Cards
Last season my son made his own custom trading card at Oracle Park when we watched a San Francisco Giants game. The put the card in a little acrylic frame that he has displayed in his room. I found these similar ones that you can display the kids cards. It would even be adorable to have them sign a card and have them frame it. Speaking of cards, my son’s collection has grown to be quite large and I found a beautiful way to store them all. This apothecary style organizer looks vintage on a dresser and allows him to organize his trading cards instead of thrown in a drawer (or worse on the floor!).
Here is the Canva template link that you can edit and create your own custom trading cards! These are for personal use only. Not to be sold or copied. Doing so will result in legal action. Let’s keep these free and fun for everyone.
Have a great season!
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