Spread Christmas Cheer With Recycled Greeting Cards

We all know it is of utmost importance to show your clients how much you value their business. Sending them Christmas cards is a great first step. What’s an even better way, you ask? How about sending them recycled greeting cards? Why not give the best impression you can possibly render?? When you send out environmentally friendly cards, you are providing an excellent example. With today’s economy, it is super important to reuse, recycle, and be “green” in as many ways as we can. Your clients will not only be impressed; they’ll be extremely happy to know that the person they conduct business with is eco-friendly.

Design 725CS - Vintage Holiday Greetings Card
Design 725CS - Vintage Holiday Greetings Card

The Gallery Collection features many Christmas Cards that are FSC certified or are produced with recycled paper. Some of those cards boast proud symbols of our green ways, such as Design 725CS – Vintage Holiday Greeting Card. In addition, our ink is agri-based ink made from vegetable oils extracted from linseed and soy. Why not take pride in the choice of cards you send out, and choose one that is ecological? Your clients will notice your good taste and be pleased. Better yet, you’ll know you’re taking the right steps to help our fragile environment while showing your clients you care!

Saving Paper Twice: Using Environmentally Friendly Holiday Cards

Every year around the holidays, we all send out dozens (sometimes even hundreds!) of greeting cards. Usually, we save some, display some on the mantle or the fridge, but most of them end up in a pile to be recycled. I began buying environmentally friendly holiday cards in order to make my efforts to be festive a little more green, but I still ended up recycling so many holiday cards that I received. It seemed so wasteful that I had almost given up on sending holiday cards and decided to send e-cards instead. Then I went to a friend’s house during the holiday season, and she had streamers made of cards strung up throughout her house. At the top of every doorway and even hanging from one window sill, she had ribbons strung which were holding old greeting cards. I was amazed at her ingenuity in re-using old Christmas cards as decorations. Her idea only works for horizontal cards, however, so I began to give some thought to new ideas of re-using greeting cards to decorate. This is the list of ideas I’ve come up with over the past two holiday seasons:

•    Holiday Postcards:  If I receive a holiday card which only has writing on the one panel inside, I cut the front off of the card and use it as a postcard. I draw the lines and boxes on the blank side and leave the design from the front of the card as the front of the postcard. Then I can mail someone a Christmas postcard! It costs less in postage, too. If the card design is a photograph with no writing on it, many times it is suitable for all occasions, not just holidays.

•    Holiday Streamers: My spin off of my friend’s idea was to create streamers from all kinds of cards: vertical, horizontal, even photo cards. I simply punch a hole in the top and bottom of each card and string a ribbon through the holes. The ribbon covers the back of the card so that the front design can be seen when the streamers are hung. In order to avoid the streamers being too heavy, I usually cut the card in half if it is a folded card and use only the designed half. These streamers look beautiful all over the house, and they can be used year after year. The greatest part is that you’ll never run out of materials!

•    Paper Ornaments: For those of you who want to be even more creative, you can cut ornaments out of old greeting cards. Simply make a stencil of a holiday-related object, such as a candy cane, a stocking, a Christmas tree, a dreidel, a snowflake, or any object that relates best to your holiday traditions. Using the stencil, you can cut out many matching and non-matching objects out of received greeting cards. We decorated our tree with these paper ornaments last year and they looked beautiful! This is a great, easy craft to do with children, and then you can let them color on the blank side if they wish. You can even use a little glitter glue on the edges to make it extra special.

Being eco-friendly can be so much fun, and it can be a money-saving adventure in these trying times. Kids love craft projects, especially around the holidays, and even more so when they know you’ll be displaying their beautiful artwork around the house. These ideas are just a starting point. If you think of more great craft ideas to re-use recycled greeting cards, please comment below and let me know. Happy Recycling!

Eco-Friendly Holiday Cards and Lessons Learned

I consider myself a fairly open-minded person and I also love to learn new things. I remember so many times being in school and learning the lesson for the day and having a light bulb go off in my head as I finally caught on to the concept that my teacher was trying to get across. I see it now in my own children’s faces when they finally get something that I am trying to teach them.

The reason I mention this is because I recently had another light bulb shine bright in my head when I went to order my Christmas cards. It finally occurred to me that I can make a difference in the environment with the purchases I make. So for the first time this year, I am choosing environmentally friendly holiday cards to send to my friends and family. I know there are still a lot of things that I can do in my daily life to be more environmentally friendly but I can honestly say that I do think about the environment and make conscious decisions to help protect it for my myself, my children, and my children’s children. By choosing products that are made using eco-friendly methods, I can make a difference. The Gallery Collection offers many Christmas cards made from wind power as well as recycled cards and also FSC certified energy sources.

I always enjoy sending my greeting cards during the Christmas season but this year, I feel really good about sending environmentally friendly cards. And now I’m off to see what other purchases I can make that will help protect Mother Earth. Any excuse for some more shopping!

Environmentally Friendly Business Holiday Cards – An Inexpensive Way to Make a Statement

Remind the people and companies that you do business with that the environment does not take a back seat to your bottom line. And the festive holiday season is a great time to do just that! Consider sending environmentally friendly business holiday cards to your vendors, business partners and clients. Now, more than ever, they are an inexpensive way to make a statement that your business cares about the planet.

When it comes to holidays cards for business, to send or not to send shouldn’t be the question. Every business wants to enhance their current relationships, attract new clients and customers, remind old clients of their existence, and show appreciation to all of those they do business with.

It does not take much time to make an impact. Get on the internet and visit GalleryCollection.com. You will find plenty of holiday cards that are FSC certified, which means that the raw materials used to make the paper stock were harvested and replenished in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. The paper used to make these beautiful holiday cards is also made with wind power… paper made from renewable energy! Your customers, clients and business partners will be pleased when they see that you have not only reached out with warm holiday wishes, but that you did so in an environmentally friendly way. The icing on the cake is that you do not have to spend a lot of money to send out elegant, rich looking environmentally friendly business holiday cards.

It’s Easy Being Green with Personalized Holiday Cards

I see them everywhere – in the dentist’s office by the receptionist, in my Aunt Lucy’s kitchen next to the old wall phone, in the “automotively” fragrant service lounge where I’m waiting to have my car repaired, even in my modest gray cubicle at work – all sorts of calendars personalized with business contact info.

So last year, using the same idea, my husband and I decided to send out personalized holiday cards, unique ones that wouldn’t be tossed out with the trash on January 1st. Purposely, we opted for calendar cards. They are tri-fold and fit in a one-postage-stamp-sized matching envelope. Since we had several lines of space at the bottom of the calendar card to work with, we personalized a message for our family and friends and ended with our first names. The words were crisply embedded with a shimmering gold foil. We tried to craft a special phrase that would be encouraging, attractive and applicable throughout the year. If we were business owners the space on the calendar card would be used for our address, phone, fax, and website info.

Confident we had made a useful choice with our holiday cards, we were further delighted to discover that our calendar cards choice was designated as environmentally friendly. That means they were produced with raw materials from forests harvested and replenished in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. The elegant card paper stock was made through wind power and in facilities where certified renewable energy is used, offsetting carbon emissions. With sustainability being a keyword these days we knew we had succeeded in our green quest.

On a related note, it’s easy for anyone to see that in tough economic times it is more important than ever to give thanks to an individual customer or client that has remained loyal – an end of the year recognition to those who have frankly, kept all our places of employment going. On the personal side we chose personalized holiday cards to keep our family connections going.

The custom Christmas cards in a colorful and artistic calendar format are useful throughout the year and a solid choice. They are responsibly produced and the green way to go.

Environmentally Friendly Holiday Cards for Every Climate

Some people can’t relate to the winter holiday season without thinking of snow. If you’re not one of those people, you might have more difficulty finding business holiday cards that suit your taste. Add to that your desire for environmentally friendly holiday cards, and you may find even fewer from which to choose. Fortunately I’ve found quite a number of Gallery Collection holiday cards that fill these criteria, and two that I think are especially appealing.

Holiday Meadow Season’s Greetings Card, design #129CW, features an intriguingly beautiful scene. You wonder where this place is because you have a sense of wanting to step right into it. Its foreground is lush with evergreens and magenta-colored heather. In the mid-ground there appears to be an expanse of misty meadow, backed by a horizon line of evergreen trees. Beyond those, a sugarloaf of snow-dusted rocky mountaintop rises to smoky violet sky. This scenery is set within tastefully shaded embossed framing, below which are the gold foil words “Season’s Greetings.” As if all that were not enough to entrance the viewer, to the sides of the frame, and superseding into the picture, are embossed evergreens and heather stem silhouettes, coated in pearly white. The framing and pearly embossing really draw the viewer into this peaceful watercolor scene.

Design #129CW - Holiday Meadow Season's Greetings Card
Design #129CW - Holiday Meadow Season's Greetings Card

Whatever your climate, whether your lifestyle is urban, suburban or rural, you can appreciate the gloriously graceful design #138CX, Golden Holiday Wreath Christmas Card. This is one of those cards that must be seen in person because no mere photo can do it justice. Set on a background of creamy matte-finish sturdy card stock, all elements of the wreath and ribbon are deeply embossed and finely detailed. The body of the wreath is shaped with three different forms of greenery, adorned with pinecones and burgundy-colored berries. Two kinds of gold foil, one shiny and one buffed, bring true three-dimensional depth to every detail. This golden wreath is crowned with a large bow of wide, flowing ribbon in a charming burgundy and gold plaid. “Season’s Greetings,” in shiny gold foil positioned lower right of the wreath, is a lovely finishing touch.

Design #138CX - Golden Holiday Wreath Christmas Card
Design #138CX - Golden Holiday Wreath
Christmas Card

The fact that both of these exquisite all-climate cards are produced using environmentally friendly methods is just the cherry on the icing on the cake!