There are some very real advantages to make your own greeting cards primarily being a very personalized card that truly expresses the thoughts and sentiments you wish you convey as well as showing how special the recipient is that you took the time to make it.
It will also usually save you a lot of money over a year’s time if you go this route instead of buying pre-made greeting cards. They can even be done professionally so they don’t look cheesy, and even if you’re not a creative, artsy type of person.
Others may so love this process that they eventually even launch their own greeting cards into a home business, selling to friends, family, and a local store or even going nationally or internationally with them. This has a lot of potential, depending on what you want to do with it.
Steps to make your own greeting cards:
- Decide what holiday or event you are creating the greeting card for
- Decide who this greeting card will go to
- Will you be writing your own title, poem or thoughts? Or will you be finding text you can use?
- Will you use photos, clip art, illustrations or graphics? If so will you produce your own from scratch or obtain legally from another source?
Of course, one way to make your own greeting card is simply using some type of software on your home computer or favorite program that you can customize and print it on your home computer with card stock purchased at a stationary store.
Another creative way is trying your hand at calligraphy on card stock and either drawing pictures of art on the cards, gluing pressed dried flowers or any other type of design you’d like.
There’s a resource that is very good called Shutterfly that you can design your own greeting cards and have them professionally made. Their prices are very reasonable and they do wonderful quality work. You can choose your own templates, themes, backgrounds, etc. This is especially good if you have photography you’d like to include on the cards, family, friends, pets, landscapes or any other subject you’d like to feature on the card. They are processed by a professional photo lab.
If you use photography for your cards, your photos need to be a very good quality and is recommended at least a 240 dpi image. If you’re not a photographer or your point and shoot camera just can’t produce the quality needed, you can always purchase stock photos on every subject imaginable for very reasonable rates and are completely legal for your use; even should you decide to turn this into a business.
If you want poems to use and you’re not a writing, you can also hire someone to do so for you at very reasonable costs from either elance or odesk services. There are many talented, creative writers out there willing to contract what you want and they bid for your job. It can be surprisingly inexpensive to do so.
Once you’ve designed your greeting cards for the holiday or event of your choice, you may want to order a dozen or more of those to have on hand for future similar events.
Valerie Garner - Hi, I'm Valerie a midlife lady who loves to learn new things, photography, reading, writing, and drinking coffee with friends. I've ...
