Tag: custom holiday cards

Dare to be Different With Your Company’s Christmas Card

When ordering a card from The Gallery Collection’s wide selection of cards, it is already pretty difficult for your card to not stand out. If you want to stand out even more for your exceptional taste and styling, here are two options to really jazz things up. When ordering a card from The Gallery Collection’s wide selection of cards, it is already pretty difficult for your card to not stand out. If you want to stand out even more for your exceptional taste and styling, here are two options to really jazz things up.

Colored Foil

Launched as of March 2017, customers now have the option to choose blue foil, red foil, or green foil in addition to the gold foil and silver foil already offered. While we do offer red ink, black ink, blue ink, and green ink—foil is such an stunningly elevated choice for your Christmas cards. Not sure if you’ll like it? Ask for a sample to see it shine in person!

More Customization

Prices will vary depending on your selections and not all cards may be edited in the same way—but with the Gallery Collection you have the option to customize many aspects of your cards. For example, you are able to write your own greeting, add as many handwritten signatures (that we then print) that will fit, change the font and sizes on the card, print in multiple colors inside your cards, or edit the text on the front of the card.

Fond Memories of Personalized Christmas Cards

The holidays are here, and in the blink of an eye they are gone. And what do we have left to remember this special time of year? The toys? The clothes? The leftovers? Or maybe the hours of repacking all the ornaments and knick knacks? No! It’s the beautiful personalized Christmas cards we have received. You know the ones I’m talking about. The one that came from your oldest and dearest friend. Or the one from your favorite Aunt and Uncle who live too far away to visit during the holidays. Or even the one from your neighbor who you don’t really get enough time to sit with. Even my cats get one from my friend’s cat. They really warm the heart. Christmas cards are the best. Some have such beautiful holiday scenes you can almost picture yourself in that setting.

And although everything gets packed away until next season, the custom Christmas cards you received are still on your table. You open them from time to time and begin to drift away thinking about all the fun the holidays are. Family and friends being together, telling old stories and devouring the feast and goodies made from old family recipes. I just love Christmas and all the joy it brings. But my favorite treasures of all are the Christmas cards that I can read over and over again, until the holiday season comes once again.

Custom Holiday Cards – Lots To Love

There are a lot of mundane things about life.  We must engage in a lot of routines every day of our lives that we don’t want to do.  Luckily, for the sake of those that appreciate them, there are a few things that can make us smile, push us to laugh and nudge us to feel good even when we aren’t expecting it.  For me, there are few things better to achieve this end than custom holiday cards.  A good greeting card goes a long way.

You can’t get personalized holiday cards just anywhere.  It’s cheaper to pick a card off a dollar rack at a drug store but it doesn’t feel as good as a one especially prepared with my unique message and name typeset on it.  I want to send, and receive, something that doesn’t look disposable.  You wouldn’t be able to throw away an outstanding greeting card the way you would if it were picked off a discount rack down the block.  There’s pride that goes into making a good greeting card like there would be when constructing a hand-written letter; it’s just more intimate and that’s not something you want to forget like yesterday’s news.

The bottom line is that custom holiday cards are something that have the potential to last and be remembered for years to come, and in a world of mundane, forgettable routines,  personalized holiday cards beats most things.

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!!

Personalized Holiday Cards Spread the Magic

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.” – Norman Vincent Peale

This is the quote I’m putting in my personalized holiday cards this year. Isn’t it lovely? I thought so too. I always have my Christmas cards customized with our names but I also like to include a quote that inspires people (or at least inspires me). I love this quote because it made me realize how true it is that everything seems a little better and a little brighter at Christmastime. People seem cheerier, stores and houses are decorated in festive colors, and family and friends seem to go out of their way to be nicer. Or maybe I am just so taken by all there is during this festive season that I’m the one walking around with rose colored glasses (or red and green colored glasses?). Nevertheless, I feel a magic in the air during the Christmas season that I just don’t feel the rest of the year. If you like this idea but are stumped as to what to include in your own custom holiday cards, consider some of these great quotes:

“What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.” – Agnes M. Pahro

“One of the most glorious messes in the world is the mess created in the living room on Christmas day. Don’t clean it up too quickly.” – Andy Rooney

“Christmas is, of course, the time to be home – in heart as well as body.” – Garry Moore

“Christmas is a day of meaning and traditions, a special day spent in the warm circle of family and friends.” – Margaret Thatcher

“As long as we know in our hearts what Christmas ought to be, Christmas is.” – Eric Sevareid

The Thoughtfulness of Sending Custom Holiday Cards

When greeting card companies advertise that they carry personalized holiday cards, it usually means that the buyer can pick out the verse he likes from the free ones offered, have a one or two-line imprint included in the signature area at the bottom of each card, and also to have an imprint on the envelopes. This type of holiday card is pretty standard in the industry.

What can separate the usual from the unique is when cards become customized holiday cards. Rather than use standard or “stock” wording for the inside writing, cards can become custom holiday cards when a message pertaining specifically to the sender and/or the recipient is used. For instance, let’s say a professional football team decides to send out holiday cards to its new season ticketholders. By incorporating the name of the team along with some kind of good wishes for the upcoming holiday season, the team has customized their thoughts in a way that combines the spirit of the season with the sport of football. Any similar idea would work as well.

The main idea is that rather then a recipient receiving the usual typical, traditional message, you would think there would be a sense of excitement when a customized holiday card that is tailored specifically toward that relationship is received. And the recipients receiving these customized cards will certainly appreciate the thoughtfulness.

Custom Holiday Cards and New Christmas Gift Traditions

I recently began cooking and baking as a hobby. Last year, I started a new tradition by baking Christmas goodies and making fudge and other chocolate treats as Christmas gifts. It was such a success that I would like to extend this tradition even further, and be able to send homemade goodies to my family and friends both near and far. That is why I am going to include my favorite recipes in the custom holiday cards that I send out this year.

I had never made gifts before, so I was nervous as to how the recipients of these gifts would react. Would they think I was just cheap and/or ran out of shopping time?! My fears were all unfounded, as it turned out that all the recipients were overjoyed, or at least seemed to be! Cooking or baking something special for someone can show how much you care for them, and taking time out during the already-busy holiday season to do so is an even more meaningful gesture.

I would like to send this sort of gift to more distant relatives and friends this year. I thought of perhaps baking the items myself and shipping them, but for the sake of freshness and quality control I thought better of it! Besides, sending the recipes themselves rather than finished products would allow me to tailor the “gift” more to the individual recipients. While I don’t really have time to make 50 different things for 50 different people, I can certainly pick 50 different recipes to share! Custom holiday cards are so convenient and afford me some extra time – time which I can use to select the special recipes to enclose in my cards. I’ll have the time to dig through my recipe box, or just to dig through my memory to figure out which recipe to send each person. Also, they then hopefully keep the card and the recipe and think of me whenever they prepare the dish.

Personalized Holiday Cards and their Historic Roots

I frequently find myself pondering over the mysteries of life, like who was the first person to find that cow milk would be good for other creatures…namely humans. Who, indeed, coined the term “human?” Who searched for wax in trees and efficiently mixed it with sugar and other chemicals to form chewing gum?

And in the same fashion, do you ever wonder where personalized holiday cards first came from? Who imagined to inscribe something artistic on some form of canvas and then thought, “Let’s get creative this year. Instead of expressing to everyone best wishes for the holidays in person, why don’t I create something festive and write a note inside it.  Auntie T. might appreciate it since I haven’t seen her in years.  I wonder how her dog is.” It was in this regard that the very first custom holiday cards came to be…though this being on a very basic level.

Personalized Holiday cards actually first came around in the early 19th Century from where else, but Europe. Wouldn’t you know they would be the trend-setters of the day back then as well? The first technique was founded in 1796. Lithography, as the technique was called, could be used to reproduce large numbers of drawings first drawn on a finely-textured stone, starting the craze as we know it today.

The year 1843 marks the coming of the first Christmas card in England, produced by John Calcott Horsley for Sir Henry Cole. Americans didn’t catch up until the 1860s when a German Lithographer started producing the first colored cards, although custom Holiday cards around this era were primarily associated with New Year’s (and I would think this cut the hassle of going out the next day with a hangover). And as it were, roughly 20 years later these cards were replaced with the modern Christmas card as we know it today and the large-scale marketing frenzy for personalized Christmas cards began.

It’s funny how the mind works. One question leads to another and another, until finally I’ve determined the historical roots of personalized Holiday cards.

Custom Holiday Cards and Puppies Go Paw in Hand

I have to say, people have gotten pretty creative with their holiday cards and messages over the years but how many people have gotten creative with who delivers those holiday messages? I always look forward to the variety of custom holiday cards I receive as the holidays approach, with one favorite in particular.

For over 10 years, I received a holiday card from Ben, one of my favorite creatures. You might be thinking “creature” is an odd word to describe a close friend or relative but Ben was my cousin’s dog and I always playfully referred to him as her first born, considering how much he was babied over the years. What can I say, I babied him too since I was the go-to person for dog-sitting Ben while I was in high school. We were all attached! Every year as I received holiday cards from friends and family, this unique holiday card would arrive with his info in the return address and a paw print signature. Enclosed in the holiday card would be a detailed newsletter describing the happenings of his favorite “pets” from the past year, my cousin Sheila and her husband Greg, and in later years his “kid pets,” Anna and Danny.

Now you and I both know that Ben was not writing the letters but it made his greeting cards stand out amongst the other holiday cards. This tradition was something the entire family looked forward to every year. Ben’s perspective had a spin to it that everyone enjoyed reading. However, 2007 was a very difficult year for my cousin’s family and the unpleasant and emotional decision of putting their 13-year-old adored pet to sleep had to be made. It is not easy putting your pet’s pain and suffering to an end knowing it is going to be the beginning of your own.

It was difficult for the couple who had spoiled a dog for the nine years of marriage prior to the arrival of their first child. The kids had taken over the focus of attention for four years but Ben was always a beloved member of the family and his loss was deeply felt. The house was quieter, free of the black dog hair and the endless trail of chew toys and stuffed animals. Everyone felt something was missing. The most trying moment came when it was time to send out that year’s holiday cards. Who was going to account the happenings of the family this Christmas? Ben was definitely missed.

One day when I got home from doing some Christmas shopping, I casually rifled through the day’s mail, which included some Christmas cards. I noticed a greeting card envelope with two small paw prints on the front. Curious, I opened the greeting card to see a great photo of our Ben and additional photos of my cousins’ family (the kids were cute too!) Enclosed was a newsletter similar to what I had received for all those years but with a slightly different perspective. This holiday card was from Jackson and Sawyer, two lab puppies (one chocolate, one black) being given to the “kid pets” on Christmas Day. The letter ended simply: “With love from Jackson and Sawyer, in loving memory of Gentle Ben 1994-2007.” I had a good cry after reading the letter. A new pet can never replace a pet that is no longer with you, but it can be a great way to honor their memory. Well, that and the tattoos but we’ll save that story for another day!

Are Custom Holiday Cards Worth the Extra Money?

Should I buy a box of business Holidays cards and fill them out myself? Or is it worth it to spend a little extra money for personalized Custom Holiday Cards? Are personalized holiday cards perceived as being more professional or do they come across as being too impersonal? These are the questions that fill my head when purchasing Holiday cards to send to my clients and vendors. One thing that’s for sure is personalized holiday cards will certainly save time. Hand signing over 200 Christmas cards is just not something I want to do, and I don’t think there’s anyone I dislike enough to ask to do this for me either.

Do personalized holiday cards seem too impersonal, though? I suppose I could hand write a note on the cards of those extra special customers. That will make my holiday greetings seem even more personal since I took the extra time to write a note in addition to having the cards personalized. That could work.

Personalized holiday cards can really make an impression and show how professional your company is. It’s rather impressive to receive custom holiday cards that are personalized. Custom holiday cards should be the way to go for any business. The extra money for the custom imprint is definitely smart investment. It’s really just a few extra dollars…a few extra dollars well spent. If it helps to set you apart from your competition and emphasize your professionalism, then it’s worth it!