Creating Your Own Greeting Cards

Every month you celebrate a lot of occasions — your sister’s birthday, your wedding anniversary, and your Aunt Mary’s baby’s christening. Instead of cracking your piggy bank every time, why not learn how to make greeting cards? You get to save and you acquire a new skill. And if you make really cool cards, you can even sell them.

Get a notebook and use one page to create the concept of your card. If it’s a birthday card you’re doing, then that’s your theme. Think of graphics, tag lines and visuals that have not been over-used in typical birthday cards. Have you seen one of those folder-sized cards? Do away with those crummy old-school jagged-edged border cards. Time to go fancy with your designs.

Catch phrases. Hallmark cards have definitely raked up a lot of dough with their cheesy and sentimental quotes. But if you want to be more creative, try to go crazy on the lines that you can have there. Exercise your wit and lexical dexterity in coming up with catch phrases.

Try to think of something like that which is going to make your card really special and meaningful. Pop-up cards are very appealing. It’s hard work, true, but if you want to try it, why not? If your mind goes blank on the design, go to the card store and (No, don’t purchase one.) try to get ideas from what’s on the shelf. Think innovate.

Familiarize yourself with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, or other desktop publishing software if you wish to use computer graphics on your card. These applications would often have templates to easily guide you to print out the perfect card. Measuring and estimating positions and margins can be a bit of trouble so using templates will definitely help.

Proofread your content and check your design before you print the final material. It’s very important to make sure that there’s no typo in the text.

Make a lot. The second card you make will take a shorter time because you work faster the more cards you make. Make a list of the upcoming occasions and make a card for each one. This way, you have your cards way in advance. If you have a pile of cards at the ready, you’ll never get caught forgetting someone else’s birthday.