How to Create & Print Greeting Cards with Your Own Artwork

1. Welcome to Class!: In a world of digital content, social media, email, and text, greeting cards may feel like a thing of the past, but I'm here to tell you they're must definitely not. In fact, I would argue they are even more important and more meaningful now than ever. Handwritten greeting cards are not only a special thoughtful way to show your loved ones you're thinking about them, they're also a product that will always be in demand for holidays and special occasions throughout the year. Whether you want to launch a successful online shop or simply learn how to make greeting cards to give to your family and friends, you're in the right class. My name is Priya from Petals by Priya Watercolor Designs, and I'm a full-time artist based in Honolulu, Hawaii. In addition to teaching classes like this one, I also run an online paper goods shop where I sell art prints, greeting cards, stickers, and wholesale my products to retail stores around the US. My online shop started pretty small when I was just selling fine art prints from the beginning. But when I added greeting cards to my product line, that's when my business really started to take off. In over the years, I've sold thousands of cards to individual customers and retailers. I won't lie, it took me quite a while to fine tune my process for designing and printing cards in-house. But now I have an organized streamlined process and that's what I'll be sharing with you inside the class. The class will cover everything you need to know to start creating greeting cards on your own, including a thorough supply list, card planning and preparation, designing a backside that represents your brand, designing a captivating front side including artwork creation and selection, using mockups to visualize your greeting card design, setting up your print files and printer settings in two formats depending on your printers capabilities, test printing and making color adjustments, scoring and trimming your card, choosing envelopes and packaging for selling online, organizing your files for efficient card making down the road, and tips for setting up an online shop and getting into wholesale. By the time you're done with this class, you'll be able to design, prints, and package custom greeting cards all from the comfort of your own home or studio, and you'll be ready to set up an online shop or wholesale catalog if your end goal is to be able to sell your greeting cards. It's a lot to cover, but I'll be going through everything step-by-step in real-time so you can follow along at your own pace and feel confident every step of the way. One important note before we get started. This class is focused primarily on the file setup, printing, and execution of the greeting cards with less of an emphasis on the actual artwork and design aspect. A basic understanding of Photoshop functions is recommended. If you're new to Photoshop, you can learn all the beginner skills in my other class called digitizing your artwork. Before we jump into the class, if you want to learn more or connect on social media, you could find me on Instagram @petals.by.priya, on my website, petalsbypriya.com, or on YouTube @PetalsbyPriyaWatercolor. If you're ready to become a greeting card expert, let's get started. 2. Class Project: The final project for this class will be your very own greeting card made start to finish by you. As I mentioned in the introductory video, we'll be going over every step of the greeting card process from start to finish so you can follow along at your own pace. If you have questions or challenges along the way, you're welcome to post those in the Discussion tab below. That's a great place to share insights, build the community, and learn from each other. Keep in mind, every printer is different and some of the settings and adjustments will vary depending on what supplies, paper, printer, and ink you're using. You might have to do some fine tuning on your end. But in general, you'll learn at my tried and true process and workflow for creating custom, beautiful greeting cards from home. At the end of class, please remember to upload your project in the Project and Resources tab below. I'd love to see your final results. I went ahead and uploaded mine first and I hope to see yours there soon. In the next lesson we'll go over all the supplies you need to get started. 3. Supplies: Let's talk about the supplies you'll need for this class. First step, you'll need to have your artwork digitized and ready to go for your card design. If you're not sure how to do this, I have a whole other class that covers that topic called digitizing your artwork. Or if you create digital artwork, like in Procreate or Adobe Illustrator, then you're already good to go. Next up, you'll need Adobe Photoshop. I included a link for the seven-day free trial below. A general understanding of basic photoshop skills is also recommended as I won't be going into detail in this class. You will also need an inkjet printer for printing out the greeting cards. I use the canon PIXMA iX6820 printer. But there are tons of other newer models out there to choose from. For the greeting cards, you'll need high-quality thick paper. I use 130-pound ultra-thick card stock because I prefer my cards to feel luxurious and heavyweight, but I recommend looking for paper that's at least 110-pound thickness. Anything below that just feels too flimsy to be a greeting card. You'll also need a scoring board and paper trimmer for the final steps of the greeting card process. I'll go over those in more detail when we get to that section. Finally, you'll need envelopes and either clear sleeves or class for the packaging lesson, but those are optional if you don't plan on selling your greeting cards. When you've gathered your supplies, I'll see you in the next video to start planning out our greeting card designs. 4. Card Planning & Preparation: There are a few main things to keep in mind when you're planning out your greeting card designs. The first and most important piece is the artwork that you'll be using for your card. For the example that I'll be walking you through today, I'm going to be creating this tropical hibiscus thank you card. So I know that I'll be using my hibiscus watercolor painting that I'll be placing repeatedly on the front of the card. So for this case I'm going with more of a pattern design. But lots of my other cards have individual artwork, like other tropical plants, seascapes, florals, you get the idea. So it's up to you and your vision for the card and what artwork you have available to use. This will also depend on if you plan to create artwork specifically for the card versus repurposing artwork that you already have. In my case, I typically create artwork first for fine art and prints. Then if I think it could also make a cute card design, I'll do that next. For example, I painted this Monstera piece with just the artwork in mind. First focused on creating art prints like this one. But I also knew this could make a simple but beautiful every day greeting card. So I designed that next using the exact same piece of artwork that I had digitized. You could also see I use that same Monstera element and another thank you card as well, that continues the tropical plant theme. On the other hand, some artists and designers create artwork with the end product of a greeting card in mind. In some ways this can be better because you can start to paint or draw using specific dimensions right from the very beginning. There's no right way to do this. Either way is fine. You'll just have to experiment a bit and figure out which way works best for you. The next thing you'll want to consider is the purpose of your card. Is it a thank you card, a birthday card, an everyday greeting card, do you want to include a message or just let the artwork stand alone? You'll also need to decide whether you want your card to be portrait or landscape orientation. This usually depends on what type of artwork you plan to use. For example, for my Monstera leaf card, I designed it in portrait style because the leaf is more vertical. But for my aloha card, I created it horizontally because the texts design can be displayed much better in a landscape orientation. Finally, you'll need to decide what size your card will be. Now, two of the most common sizes are A7 and A2 cards. A7 are the larger five by seven inch cards that you often see in the stationary aisle in stores. The A2 cards are smaller, but also a very common size used by stationery shops and designers. All of the cards I sell in my online shop and wholesale catalog are A2, which is 4.25 inches by 5.5 inches folded. So that's the example I'll be using throughout this class. To recap, the things you'll want to think about as you start planning out your card include the artwork, whether you have existing work you want to use or you're creating new work specifically for the card, the purpose or occasion for the card, the orientation, whether portrait or landscape, and the Size A7 or A2, which we'll be using in the class. Take a few minutes to plan out the vision for your card. When you're ready, meet me in the next lesson to start designing the backside of your greeting card. 5. Back of Card Design: It's time to design a greeting card and I want to start with a backside because whatever you choose for the backside can be used across all your different cards. You only have to set this up once and you'll be good to go. The dimensions for this will be 4.25 inches by 5.5 inches or 5.5 by 4.25, depending on if you're designing a portrait or landscape orientation card. Go ahead and open up Photoshop and create a new file using those dimensions. You'll also want to make sure that you're working in at least 300 DPI or higher for best resolution. Now, the backside of your card is typically where you'll place your branding elements like your logo, website and any other relevant information. For example, on my cards I have my logo, website, email address, Instagram handle, and a short message that says, designed and packaged in Honolulu, Hawaii. You can choose to include as much or as little information on there as you'd like. I just recommend using no more than five elements or lines. Otherwise, it'll start to get too busy and crowded. Remember you can hop on over to my digitizing class if you want to learn the basics of Photoshop. Start playing around with different design options for the backside of your card and once you're happy, make sure to save it. I encourage you to create a folder with all of your greeting card templates to help keep things organized. As an example, I've saved mine as a greeting card backside vertical. If you want to keep your options open for creating a landscape orientation card as well, you can create another version and save it as a greeting card backside horizontal, and that way you can easily access that for future designs. When you're ready, we'll move on to the front side of the card in the next lesson. 6. Front of Card Design: Now we can start the fun part which is designing the front side of your greeting card. The front side is where you'll have a chance to showcase your artwork add a message if you'd like and really put your design skills to use. The file setup in Photoshop is easy. You'll use the exact same dimensions as you did in the previous lesson for the backside. For me, that will be 4.25 by 5.5 inches. Starting with the artwork design make sure to import your digitized artwork. I'll be designing the hibiscus thank you card. I've imported my watercolor hibiscus element into my Photoshop working file. From there, you can fine-tune your design as you'd like, whether you're simply placing a single element or creating a pattern like I am for my card. You can also add a message if you'd like, and test out different fonts and colors to complement your artwork. It can sometimes be hard to visualize what an actual greeting card would look like just from a flat file like this. One thing I like to do is place my design into a card mock-up file as I work to get a feel for what it would look like as a real product without having to actually print it out a bunch of times and waste my paper and ink. There are tons of ways to create mock-ups like this, but my go-to is to purchase them from Creative Market. There are tons of options on there that are really easy to use using smart objects in Photoshop. I also use these mock-up files for my product listing photos on my website and wholesale catalog is a great way to efficiently upload new products and keep the look and feel consistent without having to worry about product photography and editing every time you create a new design. Now, seeing your artwork come to life on mock-ups can be super exciting. It's part of the reason why I love using realistic mock-ups like this one. But one thing I urge you to be cautious of is something I'm definitely guilty of is falling in love with the very first design you see. Once you see it on a mock-up, it can be tempting to do this, but I encourage you to give yourself at least a few different design iterations before you settle on one. Some of my personal favorite card designs have come after. I've given myself plenty of time to be pushed creatively and try new design layouts that I didn't originally think of. Once you're happy with your design, head on over to the next lesson and we'll start talking about printing options. 7. Borderless vs. Border Printing: Here's where things can start to get a little bit confusing, but stick with me and I'll try to explain everything clearly and show you real life examples to help explain the concepts. The first thing to know is there are two main ways to print cards from home and your method will depend on your printer's capabilities, whether it supports borderless printing or not. Let's get into it. Borderless printing, also known as full bleed printing, basically means your printer can print ink onto the entirety of your page without a white border around the sides. If you haven't gotten a printer yet, I highly suggest looking for one that supports borderless printing because you'll be able to use your paper a lot more efficiently by creating two greeting cards per one sheet of paper. It'll end up saving you your supplies and money. Because A2 greeting cards are 4.25 by 5.5 inches, if you double that, it equals a standard 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper, meaning you can print two cards using only one sheet of paper because it can print all the way to the edge. Now, if your printer doesn't support borderless printing, that's fine, you can still create greeting cards. You'll just have to use one sheet of paper for every card you print. You'll go through your paper faster but you can still do it. If you go this route, you'll need to insert trim lines into your print file so you know where to cut when it's time to create the card. Don't worry, I'll show you how to do that step-by-step. Fun fact, I created my greeting cards for my shop this way for six months before I realized that my printer did support borderless printing. When you own your own creative business, you're constantly learning new things and improving your processes. There's a lot of trial, error and frustration, but I'm hoping to spare you from having to go through all that by teaching you everything I've learned in my three years selling greeting cards. Before we move on, let's do a quick recap. There are two printing methods, borderless and bordered. Your method will depend on your printer's capabilities. Borderless prints go all the way to the edge of the paper allowing for two greeting cards per one sheet of paper, so it's more efficient. Bordered printing is still totally doable, but a little bit less efficient. In the next video, we'll start setting up our file for borderless printing. 8. File Setup: Borderless: If your printer supports borderless printing, we'll go through the entire file setup process in this lesson. If your printer does not support borderless printing, you can move on to the next lesson. Start by opening up Photoshop and creating a file that is 8.5 by 11 inches, so a standard paper size. Remember to work in at least 300 DPI to ensure high-quality resolution. The first thing we want to do is setup guidelines so we can place our files accurately. To do that we're going to hit "View", "Guides", "New guide", and we'll insert a vertical one at 4.25 inches, so exactly halfway across. We'll do that same process again, but instead we will insert a horizontal guide at 5.5 inches which again is exactly halfway down. Now that our guys are in place we can place our design files. I'm going to click "File", place embedded, and select the vertical front of the card. I'll drag it into place in the bottom right quadrant and hit "Enter" when it's in place. Now I'll do the same for the back side of the card, and I'll place that one in the bottom left quadrant. Now you can start to visualize that the vertical guideline is where the card will be scored and folded once it's printed out. Now go ahead and select both of those layers from the layer panel. You can do that by holding down Shift while you click on them, and then hit "Control" "G" to group the layers. That will group both layers together, which is not crucial but it's an extra step I like to take to keep things organized for later down the road. I'm going to double-click on the group name and rename it to bottom. That's because I want to know that these layers are in the bottom section of this file. Next, I'm going to select the group again and hit "Control" "J", and what that does is duplicate the group. The second group I want to drag it up into the top section because again, with borderless printing you can print two cards at once. Hit "Control" "T" and a little trick to make sure it stays perfectly aligned while you drag it is to hold down the Shift key while you move it up. That will help keep the layers in line even if your hand moves while you're dragging it. Once it's in place, I'll double-click the name again and name it top, so now our file is nice and organized. This is what your final file will look like once you're ready to print. There will be a few more steps in the test printing session, but just to help you visualize the final file format, this is it. If the guidelines bother you, you can clear them once your designs are placed, but they won't actually show up when you print is just to help with the designing process, so I like to just leave them there. Now, I'll show you how to do this process for a horizontal card. I'll just clear these designs for the purpose of demonstration. I'll be using a different Aloha design to demonstrate the landscape style. Again, you'll hit "File", place embedded, and select the horizontal front of the card. Since this orientation will be landscape, you'll need to rotate the design 90 degrees counterclockwise and make sure to hold down the Shift key as you do this, so it rotates an equal increments. Once it's rotated, drag it into the bottom-right corner and hit "Enter" to finalize the transformation. Now, do the same for the backside, but rotate it clockwise instead. Because if you visualize how the card will look when it's folded, you want the text to be facing downwards, so in this file it'll need to be opposite the front of the card. Don't worry if it's a little hard to visualize at this point, it'll be easier to see once you start printing it out. Now, just like we did with a portrait style card, you'll select both layers and hit "Control" "G" to group them. Again, double-click that group and rename it to bottom. Then with the group selected, hit "Control" "J" to duplicate it, and drag that group up to the top holding the Shift key while you do so to keep it lined up perfectly. Once that's in place, I'll double-click the group name and rename it to top. This is what your final file will look like when you're making a landscape orientation card. Let's go over the steps again. We'll start by creating a new file that's 8.5 by 11 inches. Then insert your vertical and horizontal guides and embed the front and back side of the cards in their respective quadrants. Select the layers group and name them before finally duplicating that group and shifting the second group up to the top. Now, we'll get to the actual printing and the printer settings lesson, so don't print it out just yet. 9. File Setup: Border: If your printer does not support borderless printing, no need to worry. I'll walk you through the entire file setup process in this lesson. Start by opening up Photoshop and creating a file that's 8.5 by 11 inches, so a standard paper size. Remember to work in at least 300 DPI to ensure high quality resolution. The first thing we want to do is set up guides, so we can place our files accurately. To do that we're going to hit "View", "Guides", "New Guide", and we'll enter a vertical one at 4.25 inches, so exactly halfway across. We'll do that same process again, but instead we'll insert a horizontal guide at 5.5 inches, again, exactly halfway down. Now we're going to create a rectangle to outline where the card will be placed on the paper and to display where we'll need to trim the card after we print it out. This is where the process differentiates from the borderless version we went through in the previous lesson. Start by navigating over to the line tool, right-clicking on it, and selecting the rectangle tool if it's not already on that. I just start by dragging out a random size rectangle and then the shape tools will pop up on the right side and that's where we'll edit it. First under the transform section, you'll need to make the rectangle 5.5 inch width and 8.5 inch height, which is the size of the greeting card when it's not folded yet. Next, if it's currently being filled by a color, you'll want to hit "Fill" and select "No Fill". Finally, go over to stroke, which basically means the outline of the shape, and make sure it's black or dark colored. Now go back to your layers panel and hit "Control" "T" to transform it and center it on the page. Your guidelines will help make sure it's directly centered. You'll see the guides turn pink once it's centered. Now you can see the outline of the card and we'll be placing our designs next. Now that our outline is in place, it's time to embed the front and back designs. Let's start with a vertical orientation card. I'm going to click File, place embedded, and select the vertical front design, and turn it 90 degrees clockwise. While I'm turning it, I'm holding down the "Shift" key to make sure it rotates an equal increments. Once it's turned 90 degrees, I'm placing it in the bottom half of the rectangle. Now do the same with the backside, so File, place embedded, select the vertical backside design, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise and drag it into place at the top. Now if your designs cover up the rectangle outline, just drag that rectangle layer backup to the top so you can see it. This is what your final file will look like. There will be a few more steps in the test printing session, but we'll get to that later. Now I'll show you how to do this for a horizontal format card too. I'll just clear these designs for the purpose of demonstration, because all we're using a different Aloha card design for the horizontal version. Again, click "File", place Embedded, and select the horizontal front design, and place that down in the bottom section of the rectangle. For the backside, you'll hit "File", place embedded, but for this you'll need to rotate it 180 degrees so it shows up upside down on your file. Because once it's printed unfolded, that's how it will show up correctly. Don't worry if it's hard to visualize now, it'll be easier to see once the card is printed out, and that's what your final file will look like. Let's recap those steps again. First, open a new file that's 8.5 by 11 inches. Insert your vertical and horizontal guides and create a rectangle outline that's 5.5 by 8.5 inches. Make sure it's centered. Finally, you'll embed the front and back side of the cards in their respective sections. We'll get to the actual printing and the printer settings lesson, so don't print it out just yet. 10. Printer Settings: Now our print file is ready to go, but we first need to review the printer settings in this lesson, which I know is the boring stuff, but it's important we set everything up correctly now so that in the future all you have to do is swap out your new greeting card design and that's it. You won't have to go through these setup panes every single time. I want to reiterate though all printers are different and the printer, supplies, ink, and paper you're using is probably different than the ones I'm using. My exact printer settings may not be perfect for you, but I'll explain all the different options and what they mean so that you can choose the printer setting combination that works best for you. First step, go ahead and hit "Control" "P" or file print to bring up your print settings. Select your printer. For me, that will be the Canon iX6800 series, then hit "Print" Settings. Here's what things might look different depending on your printer and print settings. But I'll show you what I personally use starting from top to bottom. First, select "Photo Printing" and check the borderless printing box if you're going the borderless route. If not, you can leave that box unchecked. Then hit the Color matching box and a pop up will appear with advanced settings for your color adjustment. Select the matching tab and hit "None". We want to disable this because we want photoshop to manage the colors, not the printer. I'll go over this again in a minute. Then choose your paper type. I select matte photo paper, but you can use glossy if that's what you're using. Select the paper size 8.5 by 11 and print quality should be set too high, then you can hit, "Okay." In photoshop, under color management, there are two options to choose from. Either printer manages color or photoshop manages color. You'll want to select the option that says Photoshop manages color because that will allow for more advanced color settings where you can set up profiles for your specific printer, paper, and ink combination. However, if you choose this option, you must remember to disable the printer color matching option, which is what we just did earlier because you don't want to accidentally have the printer and photoshop trying to manage the colors. For the printer profile, this is again where things can get a little complicated. Choose the setting that's closest to the paper you're using. A lot of paper brands will tell you which setting to select based on the paper type you purchased especially if you purchase paper from the same brand as your printer. If yours doesn't, choose the closest option. For example, I select MP2 because that stands for photo paper with a matte finish, which is closest to the card stock paper I use. You can also experiment with glossy-coated paper if you want your cards to have a glossy finish instead of matte. If you do, make sure you're printing on the correct side so the exterior is glossy, that the inside is still uncoated to allow for a smooth riding surface when someone's using the card. I included a link down below to an article from Adobe that I found helpful when I was first researching printer and color settings. It talks about everything I've mentioned in this lesson in greater detail. If you're interested in learning more, before you press "Print", please watch the next video first because we'll go through the test printing process and make some slight changes to your printing file before we print the final thing. Head on over to that lesson and I'll meet you there. 11. Testing & Color Adjustments: At this point your print file is ready to go and we can start our test printing and making color adjustments as needed. When I first started printing greeting cards for my own studio, it would usually take me between 4-6 testing sessions before I was happy with the final results. Now that I know my printer and I'm more familiar with the types of adjustments I need, I can usually finalize the design in 1-2 test prints. The most important thing we're looking for in this testing session is how the colors come out on paper as it can look pretty different to what you see on your screen. Because I've done this so many times before, I already know I'm going to have to adjust the brightness, contrast and vibrancy but let's just test one out to see how it looks. Just a quick note here, if you are using the borderless print file, I suggest hiding one group during the test printing session because we really only need to see one example to know what we need to adjust. Anything beyond that is just wasting your ink. To hide one group, just click on the eyeball next to that layer group My first test print is ready and I can tell that the colors look too dull, muted, and dark. So now we can go back into our layer, duplicate it by hitting "Control" "J" and make color adjustments on that duplicated layer, not the original layer. This is called a non-destructive editing because if we end up making an edit we don't like or we want to go back to the original, we can do that easily by just deleting or hiding that specific layer. Whereas if we make these edits on the original, you won't be able to go back as easily. The specific edits you make will be dependent on what your card needs. You'll likely need to adjust brightness, contrast but you can also experiment by altering the vibrancy, color balance, or other edits. So I'll just show you what my layers look like here. You can see I've made three rounds of edits and I make sure to name each adjustment layer, so I can keep track of things easily. Now, with all of my adjustment layers turned on, you'll notice that my card design looks pretty overexposed and a bit washed out on my screen, but when it's printed, it comes out spot on with my intended vision for the card so let's take a look. All right, that's looking much better. Now, once your edits are final and you're happy with how the test print looks, you can finish setting up your file. If you're going the bordered route, you can go ahead and print your file now. If you're going the borderless route, go ahead and delete the hidden layer because we haven't applied any of the adjustments to that group, so it doesn't matter. Instead, duplicate the adjusted group and drag the duplicated group up to the top. Now our whole file includes the color adjustments and we can go ahead and print. To recap, you can expect at least 1-2 rounds of testing to allow for color adjustments when you create a new design. Remember, if you're doing borderless printing to hide or delete one group when you print so you don't waste ink during testing. As you make adjustments, make sure to duplicate the layers and name them to keep your edits organized. Once you're happy with the edits, you'll just duplicate your layer group and finalize the print file. Now you can breathe a sigh of relief because the hardest part is over. In the next lesson, we'll go over the trimming and scoring process for both bordered and borderless cards. 12. Trimming & Scoring: Trimming and scoring the greeting cards is my favorite part of the whole process because you finally get to see your vision come to life in a real life product. There are a couple of things to think of before we start trimming and scoring our cards. Number 1, the process will be slightly different depending on if you went the borderless are bordered route, but I'll go over both. Number 2, make sure you have a heavy duty paper trimmer. Because greeting card paper is thick and sturdy, you want to make sure your trimmer can handle the thickness and make clean cut lines. I recommend using a guillotine-style trimmer instead of a slider, because in my experience, the guillotine trimmers are much sturdier and can handle thicker paper. There are heavy duty sliders out there, but at a much higher price point. I was able to find this guillotine one for around $25 at my local craft store and it's hold up just fine for years. Number 3, you'll want to hold your paper down firmly while you trim so it doesn't move and cause misalignment when your card gets folded. Also, make sure your hands are clean or wear gloves so you don't get dust or oil on the surface of the card when you do this. Now we'll move on to the scoring process, and you might be wondering, why do you even need to score your cards in the first place. There are a couple of reasons why. Number 1, it makes the fold line more accurate and there's less of a chance of error or misalignment than if you just tried to fold it yourself. Number 2, greeting card paper is very thick, so it's difficult to get a clean fold line without creasing. Number 3, it makes the whole card making process so much easier and more efficient, especially if you're making several cards at once. Sometimes I get wholesale orders for hundreds of cards at once, and it just makes the whole process way more efficient. For trimming, you'll be making two total cuts right next to each other. Now theoretically you could just make one cut right down the middle, but it's difficult to make your cuts 100 percent precisely down the middle, so I just do it twice to make sure each card is trimmed correctly. Now take your unfolded greeting card and line it up at the corner of the scoring board. In the middle should line up right at 4.25 inches. Now we can start scoring. Go ahead and square it right down the line, being mindful not to use the very tip of the tool, so it doesn't poke all the way through. But far enough towards the tip that you can still get a nice clean line. Once it's scored, you can finalize the fold and repeat the process on the second card. There you have it, your beautiful final greeting cards. For the bordered version, we'll start with scoring first and then trimming. Just the opposite of what we did before. First, line up your paper and score it right down the middle at 5.5 inches. Finalize your fold and now we can trim it along the trim lines we set up in our print file. There you have it. Obviously the borderless version is preferred. It's more efficient and you get two cards out of one sheet of paper, but still totally doable if your printer doesn't allow for that. Let's recap. For trimming, it's best to use a heavy-duty guillotine-style trimmer. Make sure to hold it steadily in place while you cut. Scoring helps create clean, precise fold lines and increases efficiency when you're making several cards at once. Score towards the tip of the tool, but not the very tip, because that could cause tearing. We've made it a long way as for there are still a few last steps which include envelopes and packaging. We'll get to that in the next lesson. 13. Envelopes & Packaging: At this point, you have your beautiful card printed, trimmed, scored, folded, and ready to go so what's the next step? Choosing your envelopes and packaging. Let's start with the envelopes. In my shop, I use these craft envelopes with a self-sealing flap. I personally chose to use these envelopes because they complimented my car designs well and they were in general a bit sturdier than some of the white envelopes I got samples of. If you prefer to use white or other colored envelopes, that's great too. I just recommend getting some samples and testing them out with your cards first to make sure they aren't too see-through. That was the problem I experienced when I first used white envelopes in my shop. Also, this is very important, you need to make sure your greeting cards fit easily into the envelopes, especially if you plan on selling them. Some envelopes can be tricky to get the cards in and out of, which makes for a bad experience for your customers. Play around with different styles and brands and try trimming your card down a bit if it doesn't fit very easily and then out of the envelopes that you end up liking. Now if your end goal is just to give you a greeting cards to your family and friends, then you're all set. But if you eventually want to start selling them online, then you'll need to start thinking about your packaging. In my experience, there are two main ways to package your greeting cards; in a clear sleeve or by using a card clasp or sticker. There are pros and cons to both so let's talk about it. If you use a clear sleeve like this one, it provides great protection of your product, especially for our shipping or if people will be touching them at an event or market but they are definitely less eco-friendly, which is a major consideration to keep in mind. If you do go this route, you'll want to choose a brand that offers biodegradable ones to help lessen the environmental impact but even so, you'll still have plastic waste so that's why I'm moving to using card clasps as soon as I run out of my current supply of these clear bags. Now card clasp are great eco-friendly alternatives to plastic sleeves but obviously they provide a little less protection. If you're attending a market where there might be rain or other things like food or drinks that will be around your greeting cards, you'll just need to be mindful of that and make sure you have other measures in place to protect your products. The biggest plus side to using a clasp is that there's a much better opportunity for branding. For example, you can include your logo or another design element that represents your brand and maybe a cute little message on the back if there's room. Since card clasps are still pretty new at this point, it can be harder to find good options, but there are businesses out there who will make them for you, you can also make them yourself so don't be afraid to do a little digging, experimentation and just find an option that works best for you and your business. Either way, you'll want to package your cards by putting the envelope inside of the greeting card. That way the customer can still see the envelope, but your branding will also be displayed prominently on the back. Again, for envelope selection, order samples and try different brands. Test for transparency and sturdiness and make sure your card fits easily into and out of the envelope. That's the most important thing to remember. For packaging, you can use a clear sleeve or a card clasp. Sleeves offer better protection, but they're typically more expensive and they come with plastic waste. The card clasp has a great branding opportunity, and they're more eco-friendly, but they do provide less protection, and right now they're harder to find but it's still doable, especially as they become more and more popular. In the next lesson, we'll talk about organizing and duplicating our files to make for efficient card making down the road. 14. File Organization: In this lesson, we'll talk about how and why to duplicate and organize your greeting card files to make for smooth sailing down the road. Since my shop has been up and running for a few years now, I found several ways to increase the efficiency and decrease frustration in my process. One of those has been to organize my files well and duplicate them for easy card making. I have six file templates in total, one for the horizontal backside of the greeting card and one vertical, one for the horizontal front side of the greeting card and one vertical, and one for the horizontal print file and one vertical. Basically a front, back, and print file for both horizontal and vertical cards. When it's time to create a new card, I can simply drag my new design into the template file and save it as a new project. From there, the only thing I need to do is make any minor color adjustments as needed and I'm good to go. You only have to go through the setup panes once and that's what we've done together in this class. From there you can create hundreds of designs with ease. In the next and final video, I'll share some more resources that will be helpful to you and we'll wrap up the class. 15. Selling Cards & Final Thoughts: You made it to the end of the class. I know that was a lot to learn. But being able to create greeting cards with your own hands as such, a rewarding and useful skill to have. I personally haven't bought a card from the store in years because it's so fun to make my own, to not only sell in my shop, but also to give away to family and friends. Along with all the topics we've learned in class today, There's one more thing I want you to remember and that is dealing with printers can be extremely frustrating. Sometimes you may feel like tossing your printer out the window. Trust me, I've been there before. I know how that goes, but please try to be patient with yourself and your printer and know that once you put in the work upfront to figure it all out now, it will be worth it in the end when you're able to print beautiful customized greeting cards that showcase your artwork all from the comfort of your own home or studio. Not to mention the money you'll save from not having to order your cards from a third-party site. So now that you're on your way, what are the next steps? If your end goal is to sell greeting cards online, you're now ready to set up your shop. And whether you start on Etsy or host your own shop website, just know that greeting cards will always be a hot product. People always need cards for holidays and special occasions. And because it doesn't cost you too much to make them, your profit margins can be pretty great. There are lots of options out there for setting up your online shop. I personally use Squarespace and I've had a great experience with it. But there are several other platforms to choose from, like Shopify, which is another popular choice for creative business owners, have included links to these platforms below, so you can check them out and get started. I also highly recommend setting up a wholesale line to get your products into retail shops. That's been a huge part of my business over the past year. And it's super easy and simple to set up on a wholesale marketplace like fair. Fair is basically like Etsy, but for wholesale lines, and I've received lots of orders on there and my cards are now being sold in shops across the US, which still feels a bit surreal. If you wanna get started selling unfair. I included the link to get started in the class description below. And just a reminder, I'd love to see photos of your final greeting cards up in the project section of the class. Again, any questions you have, you can also post in the discussion tab below, and I'll be sure to answer as quickly as I can. I want to thank you again for joining me in class today. And if you found any of the information helpful, please remember to leave a quick review so I can read your feedback. Thanks again and happy creating for me to you.