Photo Lab for Greeting Cards

[new girl on the bloc]

Does anyone know of a place to get some greeting cards (bulk, wholesale) printed that uses recylced paper? I am making some for sale and need to find a cost-effective option.

[robertwgross]

Greeting card blank stock can be hard to find at a low cost. I've found very little that is recycled.

You have a few alternatives. You can get real greeting card blank stock, and it has a very white matte finish. You can get cheap blank stock, and it has a cheap matte finish (which will have to be fooled with for color). You can get some that is glossy on one side, but it is unusual. If you use regular glossy photo paper, you will find it difficult to print on the other side. All this applies if you are trying to do small production quantities yourself.

If you try the commercial printing companies, they will do the whole job, but your quantities need to be 500 or 1000 or more to make them economically practical.

---Bob Gross---

[new girl on the bloc]

Greeting card blank stock can be hard to find at a low cost. I've found very little that is recycled.

You have a few alternatives. You can get real greeting card blank stock, and it has a very white matte finish. You can get cheap blank stock, and it has a cheap matte finish (which will have to be fooled with for color). You can get some that is glossy on one side, but it is unusual. If you use regular glossy photo paper, you will find it difficult to print on the other side. All this applies if you are trying to do small production quantities yourself.

If you try the commercial printing companies, they will do the whole job, but your quantities need to be 500 or 1000 or more to make them economically practical.

---Bob Gross---

Thanks for your reply Bob. I was looking at the idea of having a print shop do them, for economy sake. I have the Canon i960 and really like the Canon matte photo paper, which is very inexpensive, so that may be an alternative too.

[robertwgross]

For my own eye, I do not like any matte paper for greeting cards. For one thing, you want the weight of it to be around 50-70 lbs., or at least I do. I like a semi-gloss finish. For the kind of nature photos that I produce, it looks best. On the other hand, maybe your photos lend themselves to the softer finish.

Let me know if you can find any commercial print shop that will produce greeting cards at a reasonable price for any quantities less than 500 of each design. I would have to pay the better part of a buck each, and it isn't worth it.

I found one clearance sale of card stock (with envelopes), so I cleaned them out of 500 or so at a cost of 10 cents each. But the finish soaks up a lot of ink. The money that I save on card stock is burned up in ink cost.

---Bob Gross---

[new girl on the bloc]

tis' true, now that i think about it most greeting cards are printed on glossy paper. and the matte that i have makes the photos look a bit flat. thanks bob for your answers.

[fitz]

http://www.psprint.com/printing/printing_cards/greeting_cards/gloss_greeting_cards.asp

check this out...

[GenEOS]

I have used PSprint and they do very good work. Minimum run is 250 but for just a few bucks more you can get 500 run...

[khenn]

I use www.whcc.com for my printing needs and they have recently begun printing greeting/post cards. I just called them and they told me that the paper is card stock somewhere between Glossy and Lustre. Minimum order is 24 cards. Here is the information from their website.

http://www.whcc.com/pricing/WHCC_2005_printedcards.pdf

Oh, and BTW, you can print on all 4 sides of the greeting cards.

Kris