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Custom Greeting Cards: What You Need to Know

Custom greeting cards are a popular practice for sending personalized thoughts and best wishes to your friends, family, and colleagues. At PrintingCenterUSA, we make designing and printing your short-run and bulk greeting card orders a breeze. We offer three different sizes (5 x 7, 5.5 x 8.5, and 4.25 x 5.5), multiple paper stock options, multiple versioning, and two design resources (templates and an easy-to-use online design tool).

Custom greeting cards are perfect for amateur and professional photographers, artists and designers. Just upload your photos or artwork for any occasion. Artists love how our superb print quality and extra features such as creasing and UV coating ensure a professional showcasing of their artwork. Greeting Cards are a great way to keep your illustrations, paintings, or photographs in focus while simultaneously maintaining and developing important relationships. Order as many lots or versions as you want, though we require a minimum of 25 cards per lot or version. Order flat or folded.

Instant Greeting Card Pricing: Learn More

WHY PRINT WITH US?

Our printing company sells top commercial quality printing at discount printing prices! We guarantee our quality is anything but cheap. We asked Colin Hayes from Cobenali Creations what made him decide to use PrintingCenterUSA for his greeting card line and he said “I researched several online printing companies and tried limited runs with a few of them. PrintingCenterUSA offered very competitive prices, so I gave them a LOT of my business.” After printing literally thousands of greeting cards for his business, he always comes back to us for his next purchase.

VERSIONS

A major perk of printing your greeting cards with PrintingCenterUSA is the ease of ordering multiple versions by selecting your quantity and number of versions on our pricing tool. This is perfect for showcasing an entire artistic series. You can have up to 50 versions in one order with as few as 25 of each version.

Cards above by Colin Hayes 

When you order multiple versions at one time, it’s more efficient for us and more economical for you. How we do this is by gang running your versions onto a sheet of paper, drastically minimizing product waste.  When asked about the ease of ordering multiple versions for his custom greeting cards, Colin replied “I ordered 100 each of about 36 different cards, along with 500 catalogs, and they were very organized and [PrintingCenterUSA] kept me up to date on the status of each order. They have always been very prompt at answering my questions.”

SIZE OPTIONS

At PrintingCenterUSA, we offer three sizes of greeting cards: 5 x 7, 5.5 x 8.5, and 4.25 x 5.5. Our most popular size is 5×7. These can be printed either landscape (horizontal) or portrait (vertical). Another way to base your size decision is by the dimensions of your photograph. If you choose to order multiple versions, then it is most economical for all versions to be the same size.

PAPER STOCK OPTIONS

Once you pick your size, you need to pick out your paper stock. Out of 6 premium paper stock options, we highly recommend 12pt C1S (coated 1 side) for your custom greeting card project. The thick card has a gleaming gloss finish on the front and no coating on the back. The uncoated finish on the inside of the card is perfect for writing—meaning the ink won’t smudge and dries quickly. To further protect your greeting card from scratches and finger prints, try adding a UV Coating!

CREASING vs SCORING

When ordering your greeting card at PrintingCenterUSA, you’re getting a sharp, professional crease. Creasing is a process that prepares the paper for folding by creating two parallel folding points. Done correctly, you end up with a channel line that creates two distinct sides of a card—One side has a recess or indentation, the other side has a bump or raise.

There are a few major benefits to creasing as opposed to roll-scoring.

Top: Roll-Score; Bottom: Crease

Example of ink cracking with roll-score

  1. Cards fold evenly: When your greeting card is roll-scored, there tends to be imperfections in the folding. The two halves won’t square up right. With the crease PrintingCenterUSA provides, your cards will fold perfectly every time whether we fold them or you do.
  2. Less cracking: A traditional roll-score only creates one stress point for the paper to fold. This causes cracking of the ink at the edge. With creasing, the printed image of on your card will be far less likely to have any cracked ink.
  3. Professional Appearance: Getting your cards creased is a more professional option. The squared edge is consistent and provides that extra finish to your custom greeting card.

You can either have your cards creased and left flat or go ahead and have us fold them for you. Don’t forget to add envelopes to your order!

BULK AND SHORT-RUN PRINTING

Most other printing companies don’t let you know if you are missing out on a good deal. Their philosophy for bulk printing is “the more you print, the cheaper the per piece price.” PrintingCenterUSA  offers the best quality and price for both digital and offset products. We are able to do this because of our top-ranking equipment and press operators. Running our short-run orders on our digital presses allows us to maintain a low per piece price, because of a lower production cost. So whether you need a set of 25 greeting cards, or 2,000 with 10 versions, the price per piece is unbeatable.

Speak to a Specialist: Learn More 

UTILIZING GREETING CARDS IN YOUR BUSINESS

Although greeting cards lend themselves to a more casual communication style, it is still important to ensure that you aren’t missing an opportunity to add recognizability to your brand or current body of work. Add your name, website, logo, and contact information to the back of each card. It also helps to keep a consistent color scheme, font, type of imagery amongst your greeting card versions. For example, a photographer might select his set of greeting cards based solely on color scheme or subject matter.

GREETING CARD DESIGN RESOURCES

Free Online Greeting Card Designer

With our online design tool, it is easier than ever to design your greeting cards! No matter how many versions.

Predesigned Book Template Downloads

If you have the Adobe design software (Photoshop, InDesign, or Illustrator) then you can choose between one of our many free greeting card template downloads to help jump start your design!

If you are starting a greeting card project and would like to speak with an expert, feel free to give us a call at 800-995-1555. Ready to place your next greeting card order? Visit our website to get started!

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