Photo courtesy of Nova Development

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My artistic skill development stopped somewhere around age five.  In kindergarten, I made perfectly-acceptable, childlike drawings, but my 7-year-old niece’s artwork far outpaces anything I’ve created since.  Handmade greeting cards can be beautiful and cost-effective, but what if you’re a non-crafty person like me?  You can still make high-quality, printed and personalized greeting cards . . . using your computer.

Here’s how the costs work out for me:

• Store price:                             $0.99 for a cheap card up to $4.99 for a standard card
• Price of computer-made:  $0.55 for a personalized card
• Savings:                                     44% – 89%

Recommended Tools

• Greeting card software
• Half-fold greeting card paper
• Greeting card envelopes
• Computer
• Color printer

The Process

Buy some greeting card software.  (Tip:  If your operating system supports it, consider buying an older version of software to save even more money.)

Install your software and walk through the printer set-up in the program.  The set-up process will tell the program how your printer feeds and orients paper during printing.  (It’ll save you the anguish of printing the inside of your cards upside-down!)

Choose from one of the thousands of templates of greeting cards to get started.  Templates are typically searchable by occasion, recipient, and sometimes sentiment — funny, sentimental, casual, etc.

Tweak your template.  You can print them as-is, but you can also opt to change the text to contain your loved one’s name, replace images, swap out colors — whatever you want.  Don’t feel limited by the images that come with your software either; you can include your own photos, clip art, or any images you find.

Add some final personal flair.  Consider putting a little picture — maybe a photo of you! — on the back of the card with some text: “Created by Your Name” or “Crafted with Love by Your Name.”

Print!

Hand-write any additional notes on your card if you wish, and drop it in your envelope.  (Tip:  Most greeting card software programs can create beautiful — and matching — printed envelopes.  Try these out.)

Send!

Creating a personalized, beautiful, home-printed greeting card takes less time than running out to the store and saves you the expense of a pricey commercially-printed card.

You can easily save $100 or more each year!  Update your greeting card budget here!