Great DIY Gifts for Card Players

Card players can be different types of people. Some like the drawn out rounds of poker filled with shrewd bluffing. Others prefer the adrenalin pumping hits of blackjack. Yet all love appreciate nice card design and a great shuffle. Here are gifts you can make (or have made) for the card player in your life. 

Card Coasters and Cozy

If you like the look of 1970’s rumpus rooms, you’ll love this coaster and tissue cozy set (see the above photo). The pattern is downloadable from Annie’s. Crafting News goes into deep detail about how to make the set. The video above explains how to embroider plastic sheets to create coasters. Bonus: You can probably make a handful of these in an evening or two. Hit me again: The pattern also comes with directions for making the coaster holder.

Custom Card Deck

Want to show that you think ahead about your gifts? That you put weeks of planning into a unique novelty that will last year? How about a custom playing deck with special branding and funny pictures chosen for the King of Hearts and Ace of Spades? On Makeplayingcards.com, you can create decks with specialized backs, fronts and covers. Yes, it will take a lot of uploading photos, but that’s what makes it so heartfelt.

Origami Card Swan

Don’t have a lot of time or money to make a gift? You can just fold up a card into a swan and put it inside of a card. True, it’s not exactly a custom card deck, but it’s plenty cute and a kid will probably love it. Then you can teach the recipient how to make the swan. Together, you can have fun making more. Then you have a gift that keeps on giving or, maybe, dealing.

3-D Printed Card Shuffler

If you want to prove to your significant other that the 3-D printer you bought was definitely not a waste of money, printing up a card shufller is a pretty cool way to do it. The plans are available from Thingverse, here and here. After you’re done printing, you’ll have to do some driling, screwing and assembling. Once complete, you have more than a great gift, the recipient has an excellent conversation piece. Don’t have a 3-D printer? You can make a Cardboard card shuffler.

Depending on how good of a knitter you are, this gift may take weeks or even months of planning. Plus you need to know the recipient’s size. That said, this 1940’s style Fair Isle Jumper is a very cool sweater for the right recipient. Yes, they probably have to be a fan of retro style. But for the right person, it’s aces, baby, aces! Pattern available at Etsy.