If you want extended art for your Pokémon binder, you've got two choices: buy a printable digital file and print it yourself, or buy printed inserts that arrive ready to slot in. Short answer: printables are cheaper and great if you already have a decent printer and enjoy a project. Printed inserts cost more but save time, and the finish is more consistent. Here's an honest look at both. (Yes, we sell printed ones, so we've tried to be fair.)
What you're actually buying
Printable (digital download)
You buy an image file, usually a PDF or high-resolution image, laid out as a 3x3 page with a gap for your card. You print it, cut out the eight panels, and put them in your binder pockets. Listings for these on marketplaces like Etsy usually cost a few pounds.
Printed inserts
You buy the physical panels. Ours are eight 63 x 88 mm panels on heavyweight matte card with rounded corners, sleeved and posted flat. They cost £13.99 with free tracked UK delivery.
Cost
Printables win on price per design, no contest. But the file isn't the whole cost. You'll also need:
- Ink: full-bleed artwork uses a lot, especially dark scenes like night skies.
- Card stock: ordinary printer paper is too thin and flimsy in a pocket (more on that below).
- A cutter: a paper trimmer or a craft knife, metal ruler and cutting mat.
- A corner rounder if you want rounded corners like a real card.
If you already own all that, a printable is very cheap. If you're starting from scratch, the kit costs more than a few inserts, though it pays off if you're making lots of pages.
Effort and time
A printable page means printing at the right scale, cutting eight panels accurately and rounding 32 corners. It's very doable, and some people enjoy it. It's also easy to get slightly wrong. A millimetre off on each cut shows up when the panels sit next to each other and the artwork doesn't quite line up.
Tips if you go DIY:
- Print at 100% / actual size, not "fit to page", which quietly shrinks the image.
- Print a test page on plain paper and check one panel against a real card before using good card stock.
- Use a guillotine or rotary trimmer rather than scissors for straight edges.
- Cut all the panels on a page the same way, so any small error is at least consistent.
Printed inserts are the opposite: open the envelope and slide them in. That's most of the reason people buy them.
Card weight and feel
This is the difference you notice most in the binder. Panels on thin paper bend in the pocket, slump to one side and feel cheap next to a real card. Thicker card stock sits much more like a card, but not every home printer can feed it, so check your printer's maximum paper weight before you buy.
Printed inserts on heavyweight card feel closer to a real card in the hand and stay put in the pocket.
Colour and finish
Home printers vary a lot. Colours can come out darker or more saturated than on screen, and dark artwork can lose detail in the shadows. Glossy photo paper adds glare under binder pockets, which is why many people choose matte stock either way.
A printed insert gives you a consistent result from page to page. Ours are matte for the same anti-glare reason. To be fair, a good home printer on good matte card can look excellent. It just takes some trial and error.
Sleeving and fit
Real cards in a binder are often in penny sleeves. If your card is sleeved and the panels around it aren't, they can sit at slightly different heights and the artwork won't line up perfectly. Sleeving home-cut panels fixes this, but it's another job and another cost.
Our printed panels arrive already sleeved, so they sit the same way as a sleeved card. Either way, size matters more than anything: the panels need to be cut to card size (63 x 88 mm) to fit like a card.
Choice and customisation
A digital file can be printed again if a panel gets damaged, and you can resize it for an unusual binder or a wall frame. That flexibility is a real plus for printables.
Printed inserts are fixed at card size. On the other hand, we take custom requests for cards we haven't done yet.
A note on AI art (both kinds)
A lot of extended art, printable and printed, is made with the help of AI, and not every seller says so. Ours is: the art is AI-assisted, then edited and finished by us before printing. If that matters to you either way, check the listing or ask the seller before you buy.
So which should you buy?
Choose a printable if:
- You already have a good printer, card stock and a trimmer.
- You enjoy crafting and don't mind a few test prints.
- You're filling lots of pages on a tight budget.
- You want to resize the art for something else.
Choose printed inserts if:
- You don't have a printer that handles thick card.
- You want them to feel like cards and line up first time.
- You're buying a gift (nobody wants to receive a PDF and a craft knife).
- You only want a few showpiece pages and would rather not buy the kit.
Plenty of collectors do both: printables for bulk pages and printed inserts for the front page and favourite cards.
If printed sounds right for you, find your card by set, such as Prismatic Evolutions, Pokémon 151 or 30th Celebration. For layout ideas, see our Pokémon binder ideas.