Actual metallic stone & slate stamped into premium cotton or suede stocks. Real stone & slate. Three substrate options. The card people don't throw away.
Real metal pressed into the card under heat and pressure. Not ink, not laminate, not just printed colour.
Reference · metallic stone & slateReference · press running stock
Stone & Slate stamping is a printing technique where a heated metal die presses real stone & slate into a paper or card surface, leaving a permanent metallic impression that cannot be replicated by ink or digital printing.
How it works · 4 steps
The cross-section, one frame at a time
01
Card waiting
A blank card stock sits on the press bed. Cotton, suede, or sandwich — substrate matters as much as the foil.
02
Die heats, descends
A custom metal die in the exact shape of your foil artwork is heated to 250°F. Foil film is fed between die and card.
03
Foil fuses to substrate
Heat + pressure transfer the metallic layer of the film into the card, leaving a precise impression slightly depressed below the surface.
04
Finished card
Die lifts. The non-foiled film peels away. What remains is a brilliant, permanent metallic shape with a tactile recess fingers can feel.
Why it matters · Foil vs printed gold
Real metal beats printed metallic. Every time.
Both arrive at "gold." Only one stays gold a year from now, when somebody picks up your card off a desk.
Recommended
Real foil stamp
Heated die fuses metallic film into the substrate
Stone & Slate · 12µ
Reflectivity★★★★★
Permanence10+ years
TactileYes · debossed
Cost (250 qty)from $185
Not what we do
Printed metallic ink
CMYK or Pantone "gold" ink laid down by a digital press
Pantone 871 C
Reflectivity★★
Permanence12–24 months · oxidises
TactileNo · flat
Cost (250 qty)from $50
The difference is real metal versus light-scattering pigment. A foil stamp reflects like a mirror; printed metallic ink scatters light the way matte yellow paint does — bright when fresh, dull within a year. If your card lives in a wallet for 18 months before someone picks it up again, that gap matters.
Templates
Stone & Slate design templates.
Our most popular stone & slate business card designs — pre-built for this stock. Pick one, drop your details, send to print.
Inkgility offers cold foil, raised UV, and printed metallic on request for cost-sensitive projects. But the gold cards customers reorder — and the cards that get photographed — are almost always hot-foil-stamped.
Buyer's guide
How to choose, design, and order stone & slate business cards.
Five tools, not five paragraphs. Use them in order and you'll never make a bad stone & slate decision.
Tool 01 · The decision
Should you order stone & slate at all?
Three quick yes/no questions. We'll tell you honestly.
1 Is your brand priced at a premium — or aiming to be?
2 Do you hand cards to people who judge production quality?
The foil itself is only part of the equation. Three substrate-and-finish choices determine whether your card reads luxury or tacky.
Rule 1 · Calm substrate, loud foil
Do: soft-touch laminate, uncoated cotton, suede. Don't: glossy or coated stocks — the substrate competes with the foil for light.
Rule 2 · ~10% coverage, not 50%
Do: foil a logo, monogram, signature line. Don't: full-coverage foil wastes the technique's strength and reads gaudy.
Aa
Aa
Rule 3 · Matte ink for the rest
Do: print body type in matte black or deep brand colour. Don't: reverse to white on dark — the foil should be the brightest thing.
Quantity strategy.
The 100-card minimum exists because die-setup is a fixed cost. After that, every additional card is cheap. Tell us how you use cards and we'll suggest a tier.
8pt sans-serif, 10pt serif. Avoid fine serifs at small sizes.
Colour mode
CMYK or Pantone. Submit RGB and we'll convert — but colours shift.
Bleed & safe zone
0.125" bleed, 0.125" safe zone inside trim
Common mistakes we catch.
Our prepress team flags these before production. Knowing them up front saves a proof revision round.
×
Foil layer set as a CMYK colour swatch
✓
Separate spot colour layer, labelled "Foil"
×
Foil overlapping printed ink areas
✓
Design foil and ink as non-overlapping zones
×
RGB artwork submitted as final
✓
Submit CMYK or supply a Pantone match for brand colours
×
Live fonts embedded, not outlined
✓
Outline all text in the file you send, especially the foil layer
×
Quoting clients before checking the 100-card minimum
✓
Set the floor in your first conversation
Our foil press · Brooklyn, NY production floor
Behind the press
The job we still talk about.
Last spring a wedding planner sent in artwork with a hairline stone & slate monogram — the kind we'd usually flag at prepress because the stroke was under our 0.5pt minimum. The designer was specific: she wanted it thinner than safe.
We ran a test plate on a single card. The deboss caught. The foil held. We printed her 500 cards exactly as she drew them. She sent us a photo three months later: every bride who'd received one had asked about the printer. Eleven new wedding clients in one quarter.
The short answer: a decade in a wallet, indefinitely in a box.
10+ years in use
The foil is fused to the substrate at 250°F under tons of pressure. It does not flake, peel, or oxidize. Cards stored in a leather card case, wallet, or business-card holder survive a decade of daily handling.
Fingerprint-resistant
Soft-touch and matte substrates do not show fingerprints on the non-foiled areas. Stone & Slate on a high-traffic logo position may pick up oils with daily handling — a microfiber wipe restores it.
Storage tips
Original box, room temperature, away from direct sunlight. Stack flat. Avoid plastic sleeves (PVC can react with foil over years); paper sleeves or open boxes are best.
Specs
Sizes and weights, to scale.
Useful before you commit. Side-by-side proportional comparisons of every size and thickness we print.
Regional card sizes
All four sizes shown at the same scale. Most clients pick US/CA unless they're shipping to a specific region.
The vocabulary that comes up when you're spec'ing a foil-stamped card. Bookmark this.
Foil stamping
A printing technique where a heated metal die presses metallic film into the substrate, leaving a permanent metallic impression.
Die
A custom-cut metal stamp (usually magnesium or copper) shaped to your artwork. Each foil design needs its own die.
Deboss
An impression pressed into the substrate without adding foil or ink, creating a recessed shape. Foil stamping creates a slight deboss as a side effect.
Substrate
The paper or card stock onto which the foil is stamped. The substrate matters as much as the foil for the final look.
Edge paint
Coloured paint applied to the cut edges of a thick card stock. Often combined with foil for a luxe, finished look.
GSM
Grams per square metre. Standard paper-weight measurement. A typical business card is 300–400 GSM; premium foil cards run 540–920 GSM.
Pantone
A standardised colour-matching system. Used to specify exact brand colours that survive translation between screen, print, and foil.
Vector
Scalable artwork built from mathematical paths (AI, EPS, SVG). Required for the foil layer because rasters lose edge sharpness when scaled.
Hot foil vs cold foil
Hot foil uses a heated die to fuse foil to the substrate (luxe, tactile, what Inkgility uses). Cold foil uses adhesive and pressure, no heat (cheaper, flat).
Registration
The alignment of foil to printed ink layers. Tight registration is what separates premium printers from cheap ones.
Questions
Stone & Slate FAQ.
What's the minimum order?
250 cards. The die setup cost makes smaller runs uneconomical for both of us — but 250 is enough to last most professionals 6–12 months.
How long does production take?
Two weeks from approved proof, standard. Rush is available (one week, +30%). Shipping adds 2–4 business days depending on destination.
Can foil be edge-painted too?
Edge paint and foil stamp are different processes — both available, often combined. Stone & Slate + matching gold edge paint on black-core sandwich stock is our most-photographed combination.
What artwork do you need?
Vector artwork (AI, EPS, or SVG) for the foil-stamped elements. Raster (high-res TIFF or PDF) is acceptable for any printed elements that aren't foiled. Our prepress team checks every file before production.
Can you ship foil cards internationally?
Yes — to 50+ countries. International orders add 5–10 business days to delivery and require duty/tax confirmation at the destination. Production timeline is unaffected.
What happens if I'm not satisfied with the cards?
Reprint or refund. Inkgility offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee on every print order — if the cards don't match the approved proof or fall short of our quality standard, we reprint at no charge or refund in full.
Can my logo be foil-stamped if it has very fine lines?
Strokes thinner than 0.5pt may not register cleanly. Our prepress team reviews every file and will flag fine-line risks before production — usually with a recommendation to either thicken the strokes slightly or use a different finish for those elements.
Our standards
FSC® certifiedSustainable forestry paper
Carbon neutralVerified offset shipping
ISO 9001:2015Quality management certified
Soy-based inksLow-VOC, recyclable
100% reprintSatisfaction guarantee
SSL secure checkoutPCI-DSS compliant
Worldwide shipping
Foil cards, shipped anywhere on Earth.
Same press. Same foil. Same quality. Whether you're in Brooklyn, Berlin, Bondi, or Bangalore, your cards arrive with tracking and a printed proof attached.
🇺🇸 🇨🇦
North America
2–5 days
New York · Los Angeles · San Francisco · Chicago · Atlanta · Houston · Boston · Seattle · Miami · Austin · Denver · Portland · Washington DC · Toronto · Vancouver · Montreal
🇬🇧 🇮🇪 🇩🇪 🇫🇷 🇳🇱
UK & Europe
5–9 days
London · Manchester · Edinburgh · Dublin · Berlin · Munich · Hamburg · Paris · Lyon · Amsterdam · Rotterdam · Madrid · Barcelona · Rome · Milan · Stockholm · Copenhagen · Zurich
🇦🇺 🇳🇿 🇸🇬 🇯🇵 🇦🇪
Asia Pacific & Middle East
7–14 days
Sydney · Melbourne · Auckland · Tokyo · Singapore · Hong Kong · Seoul · Mumbai · Bengaluru · Delhi · Dubai · Abu Dhabi · Doha · Tel Aviv
🇧🇷 🇲🇽 🇿🇦
Latin America & Africa
9–16 days
Mexico City · Monterrey · São Paulo · Rio de Janeiro · Buenos Aires · Lima · Bogotá · Santiago · Cape Town · Johannesburg · Lagos · Nairobi
200+countries delivered
Allorders ship DDP* — we cover duties
Freetracked shipping over $500 worldwide
*DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) on orders over $500. Below that, recipient pays local taxes/duties at delivery.
Compared to competitors
Inkgility vs the other foil printers.
We benchmarked our own offer against the four printers most often considered for premium foil business cards. Honest numbers, public sources.
Inkgility
Premium online printer
Specialty foil printer
Boutique luxury printer
Mass-market printer
Real hot-foil stamp
Yes
Yes (limited)
Yes
Yes
Cold foil only
Foil thickness (micron)
12µ
10µ
12µ
12µ
8µ
Premium substrates
3 (suede, cotton, black-core)
2
5+
4
1
Minimum order
250
50
100
100
100
Starting price (250 cards)
$185 / $0.74 per
~$280
~$200
~$230
~$110
Production time
2 weeks (1-week rush)
3–4 weeks
10–14 days
10–15 days
5–10 days
Worldwide shipping
Every country UPS ships to (DDP)
US/UK/EU
Worldwide
Worldwide
US/CA/EU
Live pricing calculator
Yes (this page)
No
No
No
Partial
100% reprint guarantee
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Limited
Competitor pricing benchmarked at the 250-card, antique-gold, 32pt-stock equivalent configuration based on publicly listed prices as of Q2 2026. Production times from each vendor's published documentation.
"I switched my whole farming campaign to the stone & slate on black-core. My buyer pipeline doubled in two quarters. People keep them on their fridge."
Danielle M. · Realtor, Bay Area
★★★★★
"Stone & Slate on cotton was the only card I considered for our wedding planning brand. Brides DM us asking where we got them made. We never tell."
Hannah O. · Wedding Planner, Charleston
★★★★★
"I was embarrassed handing out my old card. The foil on suede with the matte black ink is now the thing clients comment on. Worth every cent."
