‘Twas right before Christmas, when all thro’ the place
The workers were working at such a great pace;
The typists were typing the papers with care,
The phones were a’ringing, their sound filled the air;
The clerks were nestled all snug at their desks,
With visions of Turkeys still so picturesque.

And Fran at the copier and I at the file
decided to have coffee in just a short while;
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
We sprang to the doorway to see what was the matter;
When what to our wondering eyes should appear
But the boss his arms waving, his look full of fear.
More rapid than eagles his voice how it came
As he shouted and called us all by our name,
Now, Mary, now, Fran, now Alex and Brian
Up Gert and Up Greta Up Al and Up Simon.
To the conference room quick there’s no time like now
He said, “This problem is bringing a frown to my brow”.
Thanksgiving has passed and December is here
And our Christmas cards order is too late I do fear
What can we do? We’ll put our heads together
so as a team this crisis we’ll weather.

So off to the computers with all speed we did fly
To search all the sites in the Internet sky,
And there to our wearying eyes did we find
A website that had many choices for our bind.
There photo cards, business cards of choices a slew
There were trees, bells, snowflakes and ornaments too.
We pondered, we argued and then we decided
on the card where both business and thank you resided
Off again we did run, our selection to toss
With enthusiastic teamwork straight out to our boss.
A wink of his eye and a toss of his head
soon gave us to know we had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word but to his desk he did dash
Ordering our Business Christmas cards in a flash.
But we heard him exclaim as he ran out of sight,
We’ll wish all a Happy Christmas to our customer’s delight.

As the holiday season approaches, I once again begin my search for the perfect personalized Christmas cards to send to family and friends.  I love the elegance that a beautifully imprinted card portrays.  Rather than simply sending the card by itself, I have made truly custom holiday cards by including a poem about the past year and what our family has been doing.  My annual Christmas poem is meant to be the opposite of the traditional Christmas letter that sometimes turns into a resume of sorts and tends to look like the writer is bragging about their family accomplishments!  Thankfully, my family has a good sense of humor because I tend to poke fun at each of our idiosyncrasies in my annual poem.  One year, for example, I feigned surprise that our daughter had managed to keep all her fingers intact during her first semester as an architecture student building models in the woodshop.  Anyone knowing Sara’s accident-prone nature surely understood the joke.  Another year, after buying a small convertible car, I made fun of my “mid-life crisis” and my need to buy a younger looking vehicle in order to avoid the realities of aging.

Each year I get many comments and compliments about my whimsical Christmas poem.  I love hearing the responses from family and friends because I know I have accomplished my goal of transforming the traditional card into something even more unique and memorable.  The humorous spin on the year’s events has also helped our family refrain from taking life’s ups and downs too seriously.  Instead it has allowed us to embrace the inevitable challenges we all face.

People send holiday greetings to let their loved ones to let them know they are thinking of them and to lift their spirits.  This year, why not combine your elegant personalized Christmas cards with a little silliness and humor?  After all, tis’ the season to be jolly!!

As a kid I was always excited when the holiday season was on the way. Christmas was always my favorite time of the year. I loved being surrounded by family, food, fun, and of course gifts. One of the most interesting gifts that I received was my Uncle Charlie’s Christmas cards. Uncle Charlie always gave me and my brother the greatest cards. He usually would switch it up every year between money or gift cards from my favorite stores. The cards were always more interesting themselves though because of the messages he wrote in them. My Uncle Charlie was a bit of a jokester and he always had something funny to say. I recall one year he wrote to me, “Don’t tell your brother, I gave you more money.” He would write the same thing to my brother and both of us would have an evil smile on our faces laughing at each other.

Uncle Charlie’s personalized Christmas cards were also spectacular because he would sometimes include illustrations he drew himself. Uncle Charlie was quite the creative being. One year he drew Santa falling off a reindeer and dropping all of the gifts all over the bottom of the card. Another year he drew a bunch of elves hanging from the lettering inside the card. He would always tell me if I didn’t do well in school, Santa was going to drop all of my gifts into the ocean and they would float to children who deserved them. I never received a bad grade in school!

Ah, the joys of Holiday traditions….

It’s a magical scene:  A perfectly shaped triangular Christmas tree is nestled in the corner of our cozy living room.  Personalized Christmas cards for every little boy and girl signed by Santa Claus accompany each gift under the tree.  Overstuffed red and green stockings line the fireplace.  To me, this paints the perfect picture of Christmas.  It wouldn’t be quite complete though, without the most important tradition of our never-ending feast, filled with all the holiday favorites!

The month-long celebration usually kicks off at Thanksgiving, but the real treat is on Christmas Eve when my grandmother brings out her old recipe book from the attic.  I’m sure she knows how to make everything from memory after twenty-something years, but the perfectionist she is, each ingredient has to be measured to the teaspoon to be sure its just right.

Depending on your background, there may be a few traditional dishes that are always served on Christmas Eve.  For my family, it’s the “Feast of the Seven Fishes” meal consisting of anchovies, lobster tails, stuffed shrimp, eel, baccala (salted cod fish), mussels, and clams which are all prepared with my great-grandmothers special seasoning.  To compliment the main attraction, everyone takes part in bringing homemade side dishes such as pasta, meatballs, sausage and peppers, potatoes, vegetables, salad, and lots of fresh Italian bread and butter for dipping.

After filling our tummies, it’s time for the kids’ favorite part of the day – opening presents. First everyone has to open their Christmas cards. Once a peaceful scene, the living room soon erupts into chaos as the first present is opened.  Ribbons, bows, and wrapping paper are strewn around the room in a happy mess of children and toys.  While the kids are preoccupied with their new gadgets, the adults move on to the next order of business and start preparing dessert.  Classics like fresh cannolis, Neapolitan ice cream, Rice pudding, and my grandmothers famous triple-Chocolate Cherry mousse cake are always big hits.

Once everyone has eaten to their hearts content, it’s time to make the long journey back home to snuggle in our beds and await the second round of festivities on Christmas day.  In the words of Santa Clause from my favorite Christmas tale: “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Part of the excitement of the holidays for me isn’t just setting up the Christmas tree or shopping for presents but it’s also looking forward to receiving personalized Christmas cards. I remember being a little girl and looking forward to bringing in the mail in hopes that there were cards for us to place up on the mantel. I would pick out the scenes on the front of the cards that I liked best and after Christmas was over, I would cut them out and use them for fun projects. Sometimes I would cut them out and make Christmas tree ornaments from them to hang on the tree for the following year.

As I have grown up and started my own family, I haven’t lost that giddy feeling of opening my mailbox and receiving Christmas cards of my own. Having some friends and family members that have since moved away, the only way I get to see their families grow is when I receive my Christmas cards in the mail. I’m now an adult and don’t receive many gifts from Santa , so receiving the Christmas cards in the mail and ripping open the envelopes are like opening Christmas presents. I feel like for most of December, I get to open a gift.

I hope that my children will continue to carry on this tradition and so will their children. To me, Christmas cards are just as important as Santa, presents, a Christmas tree and carols. As time goes on, I hope that this will continue to be a tradition that keeps on giving.

They say that no two snowflakes are alike. Well the same goes for the snowflake Christmas cards offered by The Gallery Collection, You may find other similar snowflake cards just as you may find other similar snowflakes, but the nicest array of these traditional symbols of Christmas can be found right here. There is a wide array of snowflake card designs on the website to choose from and you will not find these exquisite designs any place else. Some cards showcase just the snowflake, while others use snowflakes as details to complement a deer, or a snowman or penguins. The dark stock cards with the silver snowflakes on the front are gorgeous, and you can personalize them with silver foil. The silver foil on the inside of the card echoes the silver on the front of the card for a dramatic presentation.

Design 850CS - Midnight Snowflake Sparkle
Holiday Card

Snowflake Christmas cards can be sent to those who don’t celebrate Christmas but want to celebrate the season. Not all of them reference Christmas – some say Holiday Greetings or Season’s Greetings. So if you are a fan of snowflakes there are several designs from which to choose. And whether you live in cold weather climates that experience these frozen ice crystals or you live in warm weather climates and just want to associate the season with the symbol you will find exactly what you are looking for.

Each year, when I sit down with my Christmas list, which is inevitably long, my husband asks the same question. “Are you really going to wrap all those?” You see, the gifts don’t bother him, but wrapping, to him, is a waste of time and a waste of paper. He does not understand why I would go through so much trouble to give my friends, family members, and co-workers small gifts that are wrapped perfectly. I explain, every year, that it’s my way of showing that I care. Last year, things were a bit different. I just didn’t have the time! I looked at my Christmas lists, one for gifts and one for cards, and I had a light bulb moment. I realized I could wrap the small gifts in our personalized Christmas cards! My husband was obviously ecstatic about this plan, and he even “wrapped” his gifts for others all by himself.

We themed the “small” gifts around this idea and we ended up having so much fun picking out gifts in every price range. In the end, it turned out we had bought all our gifts to fit in cards. My co-workers received glass pendants, his co-workers received ornaments, and many on our list received gift cards. Since we always buy personalized holiday cards, with our names and a message printed inside, we used those beautiful cards to wrap everything. We sent our daughter a pair of handcrafted earrings and a gift card, and our son-in-law received tickets to a game. The most exciting part of our “small” gift adventure was the challenge. It was like a game, trying to find gifts in every price range that we could fit inside our Christmas cards. My husband had such a good time; he’s continuing the tradition this year!

How would it feel to be able to create a holiday card that enables you to provide your company’s name, website URLs, twitter handles or anything else you can think of directly on the front of the card?  Editable Text cards allow you to do just that!

When someone displays cards in their home, workplace or business office the first thing that is noticed is the cover design.  The front of each editable text card allows one to provide any information that is considered to be important.  Website information, email addresses, a short message or any other bit of information you’d like to be seen by all can be added to the front of any editable text holiday card design.

Editable Text Cards Design 54CJW
Botanical Thank You Christmas Card

Personalized Christmas cards have been around for quite a few years but the opportunity to customize the front of a card is relatively new.  You might think that the design choices for cards that can be customized on the front must certainly be limited.  Not so.  There are numerous beautiful designs in this new line of cards.  Whether your taste in Christmas cards is traditional, whimsical or anything in between you will be pleased to know that there is a card that will suit your specific needs.

Personalized Christmas cards are our business.  We take great pride in providing a quality product to our customers. From the time an order is taken and each step it goes through in between, we take great care to ensure that the product that we ship out is of the highest quality.  Every person that handles an order truly cares about the end result.

We also offer All Occasion Greeting cards. No matter what type of card you are looking to purchase, we will do our best to make sure that our customers get a great quality product in the timeliest manner possible.

Once the order leaves our facility, we don’t always get to hear or see our customers’ reaction. Getting to see reviews such as the ones shown below lets us know that the time and effort that we put forth is well worth it.

Tamikaallen200
5 out of 5 stars
Posted Jul-06-2011

“My experience with the Gallery collection has been exceptional. My order was shipped very quickly and the item itself is of very good quality. There were no errors on my selection and I will be ordering from them again. Thank you so much for providing exceptional service. ”

Gallery Collection – Thank you! We are happy that you had a great experience. We look forward to serving you again!
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krschreiner
5 out of 5 stars
Posted Jul-05-2011

“It was easy to order online. We received the cards in great condition within 4 business days. Just as we ordered. Excellent turn around time even with a holiday weekend inbetween. The cards are of very nice card stock and very good quality. This nice of a quality card can make a wonderful impression.”

Gallery Collection – Thank you for your feedback. We are constantly working on improving our website and are glad to hear that you found it easy to order. We work very hard to ensure that our customers get our high quality product in a timely fashion.
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lgardner
5 out of 5 stars
Posted Jun-28-2011

“This is the sixth year we have purchased our Christmas cards from the Gallery Collection. The cards are beautiful. The paper stock is first class. The service and delivery are excellent. Of all the catalogs we receive, the Gallery Collection offers the best value for our money.”

Gallery Collection – Thank you for being a loyal customer and for putting your trust in us for six years. We appreciate your comments and are glad that we have been able to provide you with the quality and service that you have come to expect. We hope to serve you for many years to come!

The holiday cards that we offer at the Gallery Collection are more than just cards…they are works of art. Each piece of art goes through a creative process from design to actual custom Christmas cards. These cards are some of the finest, high quality cards available. Below highlights the creative process for the very popular Design 157CW, Holiday Toy Shoppe Christmas Card. We’ll show you how this card went from an original design to a beautiful masterpiece.

The original sketch for Holiday Toy Shoppe is a black and white line drawing of what will eventually become a playful, vibrant, colorful card that brings back fond childhood memories of the holiday toy store.

The artwork appears framed here, showcasing what the final design may look like after production, encased in a lovely border with a joyful holiday sentiment.

And here is Design 157CW, Holiday Toy Shoppe Christmas Card in the complete and final form. The black and white line sketch has made it’s transformation into a colorful winter wonderland, complete with border and holiday wishes. The Creative Team at the Gallery Collection is responsible for this holiday magic, making sure that all of the artwork we use for our personalized Christmas cards is made to be beautiful enough to hang on your wall.