How to Submit

Join our mailing list to find out when to submit for the 2013 show

We are open to all styles of art, photography and design – as long as it’s original. You can submit art created digitally, provide us with a photo of your work, or give us an original piece to scan (no larger than 8.5”x11”). It’s really up to you.

It’s free to submit and we only accept one submission per artist. If you send two or more, we’ll email you to ask which one. We usually receive about 100-150 submissions for our shows and only choose 50. If you’re one of the 50 artists chosen, you’ll receive 20 copies of your trading card for free!

File Setup:

• Your file should be 2.75″x3.75″ total. It will be trimmed by the printer to the standard trading card size of 2.5″x3.5″ so keep the main focus of your art within that area. If your submission is white in the quarter inch outside the main image area of 2.5″x3.5″ and you don’t want a white border, fill that space up. Your image should extend to the edge of the file to allow for variances in trimming at the printer. If you want a white border, you don’t need to include the bleed area. Still don’t understand? Email carded@hotartcard.com to clarify.
• CMYK (full colour; no Pantones or spot colour)
• minimum 300 dpi @ 100%
• psd and ai files are preferred but pretty much any file format can be submitted
• if your art includes a font, be sure to “flatten” any fonts in Photoshop or “outline” fonts in Illustrator
• if you submit an Illustrator file, make sure any “placed” items are embedded, not linked
• use your name as the file name (eg, Jane_Doe.psd)
• do not include any crop markers, registration marks, etc.
• email files up to 10mb; we’ll confirm receipt within 72 hours. If you don’t hear from us, try again.

Info to include in the body of your email (for the back of the card):

• YOUR NAME
• your website
• “Title” of your art
• a very brief artist statement (20 words max)
• your city
• your education
• media of the art (eg, mixed media on canvas)
• date of work
• anything else you might want to include
• NOTE: Your stats may be edited for length, grammar, spelling, etc.

I’m sad, I didn’t get in the show.

Don’t take it personally, it’s all about the fun times at the event. Try again next year and don’t worry about it.

A note on copyright

All submitted artwork must be original and free of copyright restrictions (ie, you must be the original creator of the work and willing to let us reproduce your artwork as necessary). By submitting artwork to CARDED, you are giving us the right to use your art for publicity, display, and sale as a one inch button. Publicity includes this website and any fair public use related to the CARDED including sale at the show or other events, on this site, and in promotional materials.