Category: Personalized Christmas Cards

Personalized Christmas Cards for the Entire Holiday Season

A few years ago I started working for a company that designs, prints and personalizes holiday and all-occasion greeting cards. I had never thought about buying personalized Christmas cards even though I mail out between 60 and 80 Christmas cards each year. But once I placed an order for personalized cards, I was hooked. Preparing my cards for mailing was so easy and saved so much time. The return address, personal imprint and signatures were already there, and with the peel and seal envelopes sending out my cards was a snap. The hard part was deciding which beautiful design, greeting and color I wanted.

I usually browse through the Gallery Collection website while making the difficult decision of selecting a card from the many lovely design offered. Believe me; the website does not do justice to the actual card itself. Last year, however, as soon as the new designs hit the plant my decision was made. The rich browns, yellows and golden hues of a landscape scene immediately captivated me. A brilliant yellow sun set over a golden landscape, capturing and mirroring its glorious reflection in the stillness of a lake. Taking a close look, one notices the surrounding banks and the glittering boughs are laden with snow. The colors vibrantly shout late Autumn, and bring to mind thoughts of Thanksgiving. The card states on the front ‘Season’s Greetings.’ This phrase, along with the presence of snow and the brown hues make it the perfect card to embrace the entire holiday season.

That was when an idea hit me. I work a lot of hours during the pre-Christmas season, and therefore tend to procrastinate in sending out my cards. I have, in fact, mailed them out during the Christmas week on several occasions. So I selected a greeting that would encompass Thanksgiving, the holiday season, and the New Year. I added a personal line sending loving thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful Christmas. Now my cards needed to be sent out prior to Thanksgiving, when things aren’t quite as hectic. All of my cards were mailed on time. The rich card with its golden tones looked elegant against the golden liner of the envelope.

A few days after Thanksgiving I was pleasantly surprised by a stream of positive feedback from family and friends. When you receive a card early you tend to spend more time looking it over, and everyone I knew apparently had the time to look at this one. Once my brother and sister-in-law got over the fact that their Christmas card would not be the first to be received this year, they complimented me on how beautiful mine were. Sending a card perfect for the entire holiday season was perfect for me!

The Same Company Christmas Cards Go Unnoticed

I have purchased company Christmas cards for many years from The Gallery Collection and every year each person who receives them comments on how beautiful they are. I used to believe that having my name imprinted on the card was too impersonal, but then I realized instead of wasting my time writing my signature, I could write a personal message instead which then in turn makes them my personal custom Christmas cards.

Each year I use the previous year’s leftover cards to send to new names on my Christmas cards list, but last year I inadvertently sent the same design to a vendor two years in a row. However, she  still made the same nice comment about the card and totally forgot that I had given her the same card the previous year. Truly, she made such a fuss about how beautiful the card was both years, I think she didn’t want me to know that she knew it was the same card!

Christmas Cards Help Stretch My Happy Season

Christmas Cards herald, what was always to me, the happiest time of the year.  That first card to arrive by mail, usually the day after Thanksgiving, from the one early bird sender of my acquaintances, was often the first thing that really confirmed it – Christmas was officially coming!

You may say, and I’m sure you would be right, that stores are trotting out their Christmas sales and decorations earlier every year.  To me, that seems more nagging than festive.  Sometimes I can see a reason for it: for instance, if Hanukkah is early that year, early sales and Hanukkah decorations allow equal opportunity for all holiday shoppers.  Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year, however, are celebrated on the same calendar dates every year, starting way late in December.

Why am I seeing Christmas decorations everywhere before we’ve even reached Halloween?  Am I the only one who thinks it looks tacky enough to see the dregs of last-minute Halloween costumes, candies and decorations, mixed in with the occasional and obligatory cardboard pilgrims with turkey-shaped candles?  Adding insult to injury are the hastily added mechanical Santas, trees, ornaments, stockings, and cotton “snow” that have apparently been gathering dust in storerooms all summer.

And, yes, I know that I have to think about ordering my custom-made, personalized Christmas cards well before Christmas, but that’s my personal choice, not something that’s forced on me everywhere I go.  And, isn’t it enough to hear Holiday music everywhere you go during the traditional four-week Advent between Thanksgiving and Christmas?  Why must we listen to it for eight weeks?!  (Composers take note: clearly, we need more Halloween and Thanksgiving songs.)

While I find that receiving Christmas cards over the course of a month helps to stretch out the joy of the holiday, I hate seeing the commercialism stretched to the point of warping.

Now… if you really want to get my goat, we can discuss the sad, dirty, sagging, bedraggled outdoor Christmas decorations that are such an eyesore long after the holidays have passed…

Sending Personalized Holiday Cards Never Gets Old

With Christmas only days away, I have received many holiday wishes from family, friends and colleagues.  I have gotten e-cards, emails, phone calls and text messages, but nothing compares to having personalized holiday cards in your hands.  There’s something about a card that makes you feel like that person went the extra mile to send their holiday wishes.

Out of all the Christmas cards I have received so far, my favorite one was from a colleague in New York.  It was a Gallery Collection design.  It was a striking red berries design with a black background.  The colors were absolutely beautiful.  I have it hanging by my desk.  There is no way an e-card could compete with this card!

That is why every year I continue to send personalized Christmas cards.  I put mine in the mail the first week of December!  It is sort of a holiday tradition for me.  I made sure to send one to each person that I wanted to extend my warmest wishes to, both personally and professionally.  In this day and age, it is so easy to get caught up in doing everything electronically.  But there are just some things that the electronic world can never beat: sending Christmas cards!

Personalized Christmas Cards and My Annual Holiday Poem

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!!

New York City Christmas Cards – Start Spreading The News

Finally, a card that can be saved and displayed long after the holidays are over and is gorgeous to look at too! How many times do you take a day trip into New York City and want to snap a picture that captures all the beauty and excitement of the City, but you just can’t find the right light or the right angle? Well, I’ve just seen the perfect cards. New York City Christmas cards offer a variety of New York cards with breathtaking views.

Whether you want to capture the splendor of the Statue of Liberty against the night sky or the iconic Empire State building at twilight, these cards are amazing. There is even one picture of the skyline at night with the buildings reflected in the Hudson River. It’s the perfect solution to sending a card but also sending something that can be representative of the area in which we live. New York City, in particular, has so much to offer, that this is a great way to show off the City at its best.

Design 77ACW - New York City Montage Christmas Card
Design 77ACW - New York City Montage
Christmas Card

I’m already thinking of how I can send these cards out to family and friends who might fly in and out of a New York City airport but never get to appreciate the sights of the City. These cards could also be a great reminder of a wonderful weekend spent during a family reunion or even a wedding. So may great memories will be revisited when someone opens these cards and once again remembers what a great time they had visiting the City. I even saw a card with the “Wall Street” street sign. That would be fun if I had a business in the financial district.

The more I look at these cards the more fascinated I am by them. They look like framed pieces of art. And yet, these are places I’ve been to. I have a feeling that once my friends and family who live across the country see these new cards, I may be getting more out of town guests than I’m used to who will want to see these places for themselves.

Uncle Charlie’s Christmas Cards

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!

Fan of Beantown? Send Boston Christmas Cards this Holiday Season

The Red Sox, Samuel Adams Lager, the T, Harvard Square, The Celtics, and clam chowder…. What do these all have in common?  They come from one of the most amazing cities in the world – Boston, Massachusetts!  And this year you can show your Boston Pride with our new Boston Christmas Cards!

Boston always fills visitors with a sense of history. Though it is definitely a teeming urban metropolis, much of the colonial architecture still remains. Is Cambridge your old stomping ground (or maybe your current one)? Then Design 80ACW – Boston, Cambridge Christmas Card, is for you, complete with crimson cardstock to match the Harvard colors.

Design 82ACW - Boston, Beacon Hill Christmas Card
Design 82ACW - Boston, Beacon Hill
Christmas Card

Do you want a card that portrays that classic historic Boston feel? Design 82ACW – Beacon Hill Christmas Card, features Acorn Street which was built in the late 1820s and is thought of as one of the most picturesque streets in the United States.  You can almost hear the clip-clop of horse hooves on those cobblestones.

The City of Boston is also known for its waterways, and we have cards that capture their majestic beauty. Design 71ACS – Boston Harbor Christmas Card, is the perfect choice for the nautical aficionado, featuring sail boats  and yachts so vibrantly you can almost feel the sunshine on your face and the wind in your hair. During a brisk New England winter, this card will bring a welcome reminder of warm days to come.

Nothing really says Happy Holidays like a nighttime skyline photo like Design 70ACW – Boston Skyline at Night Christmas Card.  Boston is lit up like a brilliant Christmas tree and that image is accented by the reflection of the city lights on the water. It’s a peaceful and serene scene that will also display beautifully in the homes and offices of those on your card list.

Boston is a city filled with history, tradition and beautiful scenery.  Share your love of this great city with one of our Boston Christmas cards this holiday season!

The Wide-Ranging Suitability of Non Denominational Holiday Cards

Today the globe is more interconnected than ever.  Business ties span the entire world: manufacturing in China, customer service in India, distribution networks in the United States.  While today’s business environment is diverse and expansive as ever, there are still a few commonalities that can bring us closer together.  English is used as a lingua franca, bridging the various business communities together.  The Gregorian calendar helps to keep us on the same page in terms of dates.  Since almost everyone uses these standards, sending out non denomination holiday cards at the end of the year can be a good way of keeping up business contacts while ensuring that you do not offend anyone’s sensibilities.

It is important to respect the cultures and traditions of everyone you are in contact with.  A common gaffe committed is sending out Christmas cards to those who do not celebrate the holiday.  So picking a card that does not entail a specific holiday or the items stereotypically associated related with that holiday is important.  Yet, a level of intimacy can still be retained with personalized holiday cards.  Some of the best cards for this are winter themed, like a blustery winter landscape or magnified snowflakes.   If there are clients in the southern hemisphere, one might be better served with one that showcases wrapped presents.  Just be sure to stay in touch in an appropriate manner this holiday season.

Personalized Christmas Cards Are A Gift In Themselves

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.