Are You Sincere If You Send Personalized Thank You Cards?

The short answer is, “Yes!” But let me tell you a little story to back up that opinion.

There was a time when I would have thought it gauche to send typeset personalized thank you cards, instead of carefully handwritten notes on watermarked custom stationery. Not only was I taught manners at home and at school (this was in the famous “olden days” when such niceties were still part of a school day), but I had also read “Miss Manners” and “Dear Abby” newspaper columns aplenty. One of my first adult reference book purchases was Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette. I have even read it!

There is an old saying (the older you get, the more of these you acquire) that, “the exception proves the rule.” When I was a young mother living in a small town, I had a dear older friend who chaired lots of volunteer work for local worthy causes. This was a lady of impeccable upbringing and easy-going perfect etiquette, who continually amazed me with her knowledge, abilities, and personal energy. She easily corralled lots of other volunteers and shamelessly charmed business owners into donations of goods, services, and cash more extensive than they’d ever intended.

The thing is, you always knew when giving in to her first request, she was sure to hit on you again and again. And, somehow, you gave in every time. You even did so with a glad heart. How come, you ask?

Well, she was charming, and she did lead by example, and she did always have a devilish twinkle in her eyes. She also made sure each person and company got its name in the event program or newspaper notice or organization newsletter. She even hosted lovely thank you parties, in her own home and at her own expense, for her volunteers. But her most effective recruiting tool was her marvelous thank you notes. Their wonder was in their very personal, graceful, and sincere phrasing. A person might measure their personal value to the community by counting how many of these they had received and saved.

Sadly, the aging process took the steadiness from her hands and her writing became undecipherable. Fortunately, she was among the first to observe this phenomenon, and true to her nature, she devised a solution. She composed a lovely note of explanation and thanks, had custom greeting cards printed with this note in a graceful scripted font, with her full name imprinted below the note’s text. She used these for her thank you cards for the rest of her life. Their most touching aspect was her handwritten first name beside her imprinted name, which I think was sort of her way of proving why she needed these typewritten personalized thank you cards.

Design #453AE – Birthday Surprise

Design # 453AE, Birthday Surprise Greeting Card, will be a welcome surprise for anyone who receives this design. When it comes to sending employee birthday cards to your staff, you want your cards to extend joyful wishes but not be too flowery or extravagant; Birthday Surprise is the ideal card for this purpose. Blue foil balloons, accompanied by blue and silver confetti float out of a decorated blue box that is bedecked in an elegant silver and blue ribbon. A “Happy Birthday” sentiment is engraved in lustrous silver foil. This unique design is printed and embossed on glossy white stock. The balloons, box, and bow seem to pop off the paper. It is a happy design that will bring joy to your employees.

Design #453AE - Birthday Surprise Greeting Card
Design #453AE - Birthday Surprise Greeting Card

Sending employee birthday cards is important. Your employees are the back bone of your company. A dedicated, hard-working staff can make a business successful. As an employer, if you show your appreciation of your staff members’ services to you, they will become more enthusiastic about their job, benefiting your company as a whole. A business birthday card is the perfect way to show your employees that you care about them personally and recognize that they are an integral part of your business.

Environmentally Friendly Birthday Cards Show how much you Really Care

Windpower greeting cards describes cards that are made with paper that is manufactured by using electricity generated by wind mills. Wind power is a non-polluting, renewable form of energy. Environmentally friendly birthday cards made with wind power energy are a great way to say and show that you really care about the well-being and long life of the birthday celebrant!

Some time ago, my power company sent me a bill enclosure that allowed me to opt for one of several eco-friendly sources for my electricity. Each listing showed the alternate fuel source(s) used for that plan, as well as the approximate percentage of cost increase to me if I opted for that plan. I was very happy to be offered a means of decreasing my own carbon imprint. The plan I chose derives its highest percentage of fuel from wind power.

I can’t imagine why our human channeling of wind power into electricity took so long to come about. Humans have been using wind mills and water mills for centuries to turn machinery to grind grains. We really should have made the mental leap and the moral commitment much sooner, but as they say – better late than never!

Windpower birthday cards from The Gallery Collection are the same premium quality as this line of cards has always maintained. The only way you can tell them apart is the Wind power logo on the back of the card. This small symbol says a great deal about the sender’s integrity as a citizen of planet Earth. This environmentally friendly symbol not only confirms your high regard for the well-being of the card’s recipient, it also educates. It gets people thinking about and discussing this and other ways of going green to improve the quality and longevity of life on our beautiful planet.

I’ve started thinking of the wind power symbol as a smiley face with a conscience!

Creating Personalized Christmas Cards – Design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings

The process of creating our beautiful, personalized Christmas cards starts with an idea, and ends with a card that is also a work of art. But this doesn’t happen overnight. There are many steps between the start of the design process and the lovely finished product. Take design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings Holiday Card, for example. This stunning, richly embossed card began as a sketch, and turned into a masterpiece.

Here is the design concept sketch for what would eventually become one of our best sellers in 2009:

Concept sketch of design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings Holiday Card

A second sketch shows the progression of the design to what was used for the actual card:

Concept sketch with color - Design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings Holiday Card

After the design was solidified, the creative team had to decide which color scheme they felt would fit the design best. There was no skimping when it came to this detail. The card was produced in a wide range of colors, in both the paper stock and the design itself. These different versions of the card were looked over meticulously until a decision was made on which holiday card design was the most eye-catching and attractive.

Some of the different colors there were to choose from included white cards with blue berries and buff cards with red berries:

Design concept - Design #864CX - white card with blue berries Design concept - Design #864CX - buff card with red berries

The Gallery Collection offers a wide range of dark stock cards, which are always attention-getters. So, of course, we had to try out the design on our many different dark stock options. As you can see, the creative team had their work cut out for them:

Creative concept - Design #864CX - red card with blue berries Creative concept - Design #864CX - black card with multi-colored berries

With so many different options – all of them quite striking – deciding what color scheme would make the final cut was not easy. But in the end there was one combination that was so striking, so perfectly gorgeous, that it became the clear winner:

Actual creative for design #864CX, Red Berry Greetings Holiday Card

The combination of lustrous red and gold foil on the deep black matte background took everyone’s breath away. The creative team knew they had a winner. Red Berry Greetings became a proud part of our personalized holiday cards collection and one of our most popular sellers.

The Gallery Collection is constantly striving to bring you the most beautiful and high quality greeting cards available. So when the holiday season arrives and your Christmas cards start rolling in, you’ll know just how much effort went into achieving all the different designs and styles you see.

Wedding Anniversary Cards – Not Just Counting Time

Merriam Webster tells us that the word anniversary is made up of two parts. The first part is the Latin, “anniversarius,” meaning returning annually. It is the second half of the word, “versus,” that gives the word its depth.

Versus adds dimension because it means, “to turn.” Whichever wedding anniversary one is celebrating, it is the turning to look back at what has happened during the year or years that makes the anniversary important and special.

It is always wise to consider the recipients of the anniversary cards you are sending. For instance, if you are unsure about the “state of the union” yet you want to acknowledge it, keep your selection on the light side. Perhaps a little humor will remind the couple of what made them laugh and enjoy each other’s company.

Of course, if the anniversary couple is obviously blissful, you can feel free to send an anniversary card that extols the virtues of love and marriage. There again, you will find a range. You know how much schmaltz the traffic will bear. Symbols such as flowers, wedding bells, and doves will epitomize the serenity and beauty that long lives together make possible. The greeting you choose can take these themes further or just cut to the chase by saying Happy Anniversary.

Even if the couple celebrating their 50th anniversary is known to be slightly quarrelsome, they will hopefully think, “All in all we have had a good life together.” What is important is that you don’t just count the years, but you acknowledge the years with wedding anniversary cards.

May Monthly Finalists

We’re pleased to announce that 4 Monthly Finalists were chosen for May! Each monthly finalist will receive a $75 Amazon gift card. Be sure to tell us what you think of the monthly winning designs by leaving a comment below; we’d love to hear from you! **And don’t forget, even if you weren’t chosen as a Monthly Finalist you may still be in the running for the $10,000 scholarship.

If you haven’t submitted a design yet for our $10,000 Create-A-Greeting-Card Scholarship Contest, why wait? You might just be one of the next monthly prize winners.

Make it easy for your friends and family to view the Monthly Finalists by posting the following link to your personal or school website: https://www.gallerycollection.com/greeting-cards-monthly-finalists4.htm

Or, pass on the code below to your school webmaster or someone you know with a website or blog:

Congratulations to…

Michelle Widmann of Highland Village, Texas,
a senior at Marcus High School
May Monthly Finalist for The Gallery Collection's Greeting Card Scholarship - #8387

Margaret Harralson of Purcellville, Virginia,
a graduate student at Shenandoah University
May Monthly Finalist for The Gallery Collection's Greeting Card Scholarship - #8358

Matthew Onders of West Chester, Pennsylvania,
a freshman at Archmere Academy
May Monthly Finalist for The Gallery Collection's Greeting Card Scholarship - #8472

Jennifer McGrath of Woodridge, Illinois,
a graduate student at the Pacific College of
Oriental Medicine
May Monthly Finalist for The Gallery Collection's Greeting Card Scholarship - #8359

A Business Birthday Cards Dilemma

As an employee at The Gallery Collection, I am an avid contributor to our greeting cards blog. I would like to write something about our beautiful business birthday cards selection but cannot decide whether to write about our birthday cards for employees, our personal birthday cards, or our birthday cards that feature balloons and presents.

Should I mention the fact that sending business birthday cards is a great idea because remembering a business associate at birthday time can help solidify a relationship, and in the long run, help a company’s business? Or perhaps I could mention how morale can be maintained by a company’s higher-ups extending a yearly birthday wish to each and every employee (which our bosses do here, by the way).

The Gallery Collection’s personal birthday cards are also perfect for sending out to relatives and friends to convey that special thought during their special time of year. Or maybe I should just describe the wonderful detailing on the fronts of the cards that colorfully illustrate presents, balloons, hats, streamers, cakes, and other festive birthday symbols. Or the many different (and free) greetings from which customers may choose to have printed for the inside of their birthday cards. Or the pretty colors available for imprinting – shades that wonderfully accent the bright colors used for the front designs on the cards.

Now you see my business birthday cards dilemma?

Design #082CS – City Glow

Design #082CS, City Glow Holiday Card, is one of my personal favorites. I love it so much I selected it as my personalized Christmas cards to send to family and friends. I am partial to city scenes and while the scene itself could certainly be in a small town, you do get the sense of a city park during the holiday season with the tree all decked out in lights standing out beautifully against the newly fallen snow. Many people equate big cities with big buildings and pollution. Perhaps they forget that you can find beauty there as well or just haven’t been to the big city during the holiday season. While I certainly appreciate the quaintness of the small towns and the simplicity of the suburbs, this city girl is glad to send a little bit of the big city to all on her holiday cards list with these beautifully personalized holiday cards.

Design #082CS - City Glow Holiday Card
Design #082CS - City Glow Holiday Card

Correspondence Note Cards Take the Pressure out of Business Writing

Business greeting cards have been a wonderfully light-handed way to keep my business in the minds of clients and potential clients. Sometimes, however, I’ve wanted to present a crisper look that focused more on my message than on an attractive card design. Finally…I found a perfect solution with correspondence note cards.

As a kid, reading books and watching movies set in somewhat earlier (and to me, more refined) times, I was strongly impressed with mentions of calling cards and hand-delivered missives thoughtfully scripted on quality stationery. In these stories, it was clear that a person’s character was often judged on their mastery of these social graces. My aspiration to this sort of sophistication seemed thwarted by ever more casual attitudes in everyday life; even in business the attitude of “whatever…” seemed to be replacing “service-with-a-smile” and common courtesy.

Lately, and with greater frequency, I’ve been hearing that the bright side of the current economic recession is that careless businesses will fold and only the strong will survive, making for a stronger economy with better products and services. If that viewpoint makes you cry “ouch,” it may be time to refine your business practices, to work harder and smarter. It has had that effect on me.

A phone call may interrupt a client’s workday at an inconvenient time, if you even find that person in. An email is easily deleted, if it’s even read at all. Mailed ads are hard-sell, easily tossed aside. The same can be said for the form letters I receive, where my name and address is clearly just an insert. Why waste my time and attention on these when the sender couldn’t be bothered to invest time and attention to communicate specifically to my needs?

These new correspondence note cards from The Gallery Collection have such a classy look and feel! I keep them right on my desk top so I can jot my notes immediately as the thought occurs to me. They have my name professionally printed at the top so I can sign my notes with just my first name for a more personal touch. My name and handwritten note can be seen as soon as the note card is lifted from its fine quality envelope. I know it’s being looked at when the recipient is ready and open to my message. I know it’s subliminally telling the recipient that I value their relationship enough to communicate, on a one-on-one basis, a thought or plan or offer that is specifically for them. The presentation of my message tells them that it is worthy of their attention. And I’ll bet it doesn’t wind up in their waste basket!