When you wake up in the morning and open the door, you see a greeting card at your door with hundreds of greetings, hoping that the day will be much better than your other days.
Greeting cards bring good wishes on special days from our loved ones, so I am sure that you know about it.
Would you like to make your greeting cards and create an extraordinary look, but you don’t have any idea how to print greeting cards at home?
Then you come to the right place because we’ll tell you everything you need to know about printing cards.
Indeed, it can make in many different ways, but it has to be extremely simple and with a few materials since you want to make it at home.
Let’s head on to collect all the information and make sure that you don’t skip anything for learning.
Pieces of Equipment to Print Greeting Cards At Home
Before you start printing a greeting card, you must know all materials involved in making it. You will easily get every element used. Let’s find out the name pieces of equipment.
Paper: The first thing to do is collect the paper for printing which you can easily find at any stationery store. The card stock would be a suitable choice because designing for such work as greeting cards, catalog covers, postcards, scrapbooking.
There are several weighted cardstocks available in the market, the most popular one is 110 lb cardstock. We discuss it in further detail in our article about the thickness of 110 lb cardstock.
Moreover, it is a medium-weight paper that is thinner than cardboard and heavier than a printer paper.
Available in various textures and colors, even though the surface is exceptionally smooth. No worries about the size and shape; you can give in the form of your choice.
We do a deep dive into 110 lb cardstock compatible printers in our article to print invitation and greeting cards smoothly.
Printer: You need a good printer that will print media related to the card design. However, there are different printers available in the market, but you have to choose the right printer for fast speed, high resolution and excellent output. In addition, you must have good color quality and paper feed consistency.
And here is a good post about printers to print greeting cards at home on your own.
Design/Template: To print greeting cards, you must select a specific design or template which can be self-designed or download from the internet. Then the card will be more attractive if your design is beautiful.
MS Word: The most important thing is to have a computer with Microsoft word.
7 Steps to Printing Greeting Cards At Home
Doing this yourself will give you a lot of pleasure and a new experience. You can also save money as well as spend leisure time. Likewise, you do not have to be proficient in printing greetings cards. Easily create a perfect greeting card at home by following the necessary steps.
Step 1: Create a Word Document, Set Orientation, Margins
No matter which version your computer is on, the procedure for setting documents in each is the same. So you need to create a new word document.
There will be a page setup area where landscape orientation needs to add as opposed to portrait. Next, you have to set the top, bottom, right and left margins to .5’’.
You have to make sure that the size of the paper is correct. Most of the time, the paper has a wide of 11’’ and a height of 8.2’’. If there is a problem with the shape, you will set the size.
Step 2: Integrate Align the Text
There is an icon in the center of the document where to click. There will be other more paragraph formatting buttons, but you find the correct icon.
The template and design of your choice should center on each printed panel there. First, however, you need to specify the type of text you want to write.
Step 3: Create columns
If you want to make a half-folded greetings card, you need to split the paper in half. When will create two columns where each will match the panel. Print to the right for the right column and print to the left for the left column.
Print on a whole paper without half folding. In that case, no more columns need. You can print in one column.
- Select format to columns.
- Presets the section and click one or two.
- Enter 1 in spacing for wide and spacing section.
Step 4: Make Card’s Covers
Firstly, you must use the column to print the cover of the card. If there are two columns, press the Enter key to move the cursor to a line or column until the cursor reaches the end of the column.
Next, combine the texts and get creative in word selection. Also, front, front size, and even font color if there is a color printer.
Then, save the Word document when you have finished selecting your requirements so that you can change it later if you wish.
You can scan any picture or drawing on the computer using Microsoft Clip Art. Even you can take a photo or painting.
Step 5: Print Card’s Covers
You need to make sure that the top and bottom of the paper are properly rounded and folded. Before you start work, you should see how to fold the pre-score cards.
Make the smaller edge with half-folded paper on your printer as is done like 8.5×11 paper.
When working on a Windows PC, you insert the printer driver and change from portrait to landscape. Next, press the click button and print the page.
The orientation is usually set regardless of the document on the computer, and the Word template does not need to be set in landscape mode later.
Step 6: Create Greeting Card’s Inside Part
According to the paper types, the printer needs to set on the highest quality settings for the card. For example, this paper indicates the printer will print on thick paper.
You can create a new template for the card’s interior or print the template you created earlier. In contrast, you can print half of the inside if you want.
Again, save the document so that you can separate it from the cover with a new name.
Step 7: Print Greeting Card’s Inside Part
Before printing, you have to pay attention to the ink. Although a high-quality card can take a lot of ink to do that, don’t waste the expensive greeting card unnecessarily without confirming the card’s design. So you can quickly check the ink by printing in “fast draft” mode.
Now come to the work; when you start printing, you have to load the paper so that the whole card is present in the panel. So, you have to follow the format that you already did step 5 before.
Frequent Questions
Here, we discuss greeting cards with relevant questions that help us to be more transparent.
#1. What is the difference between greeting cards and invitations?
The sufficient difference between greeting cards and invitation cards is the information. Generally, greeting cards send to a person or family with a bunch of good wishes.
On the other hand, an invitation card means to invite. Send for the guests on any special occasion to be present on a specific day and distribute joy among all. Invitation card provides various types of information like place date, etc.
#2. What are the uses of greeting cards?
Greeting cards usually send to express affection, good wishes, gratitude, sympathy, other feelings. Use to put a smile on the face of loved ones on special days and greeting cards for all kinds of occasions that help make any day more memorable.
#3. Why are handmade cards special?
The specialty of making homemade greeting cards is that a lot of love makes for special people with affection and passion.
Not only this, if you make the card at home, then the cost will be less. In addition, you can add your picture or quotes to the card.
#4. What are the types of Greeting Cards?
There are several types of greeting cards. Greeting cards are different for every occasion or special day.
- Anniversary card
- Birthday card
- Christmas card
- Congratulations card
- Engagement card
- Father’s Day card
- Friendship card
- Get well soon card
- Mother’s Day card
- New baby card
- New year card
- Valentine’s Day card
- Wedding card etc.
Final Words
There are hundreds of greeting cards in the market, but you will become proficient in new work if you make them at home. Suppose you have all the necessary tools and know-how to use them, you will easily find yourself an expert in making greeting cards.
Similarly, we have tried our best to help you “how to print greeting cards at home” through all the above information. You can also be successful in making greeting cards professionally if you are more efficient and diligent.
In conclusion, greeting cards help us to be bound in emotion in human society, so it is an object that is extremely necessary for our daily or special day.