Q: We have our first baby coming in October, and our refusal to find out the sex has just increased the anticipation among friends and family. I would love to send out announcements when the time comes, but I am trying not to get myself into anything that will just become a headache when we are in the new parent fog. I want a service that has beautiful cards that they will address and mail for us the day that we email the company a picture and the other basic info (we would have sent a spreadsheet of addresses in advance). We aren't looking for calligraphy or other fanciness -- postcards would actually be perfect. Does this exist?
Sent by Daphne
Editor: One company we found that will do just this is Astonishing Cards. They don't even charge to mail them; you just pay for the stamps. Their design selection is not very large however. Readers, do you know of companies that do this that you can share with Daphne?
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I don't know of a specific company but I know a lot of sellers on Etsy offered this when I was searching for Save the Dates a while back. I'd try there!
Hallmark.com does this!
Many print houses that provide this service do so for large runs (1000+) but you can contact Vision Haus (www.visionhaus.com) for information. They're a design/photography company in my area (South Florida) and they're really good with stuff like this. If you want a custom postcard designed, they can help with this too. Good luck.
I had some baby shower prints done at Tiny Prints (www.tinyprints.com) and one of their options is to seal and mail all of the invites. I think they only charge the cost of the stamp.
I just ordered cards from PaperCulture.com. If I were more together, I could have put in my addresses and they would have mailed them for only the cost of a stamp. And they will add personalized messages on each card if you choose this option.
Hello! just read this and also happened to have a greeting card site...
if you want to check out http://margotmiller.com/
i will gladly address your postcards for you, for the cost of a stamp. email me at margotmillergreetings@gmail.com if interested!
We have been using http://www.postcardbuilder.com/ for over 6 years now. We absolutely love it and use it for holiday cards, bulk invitations and everything! You can design your own front and back with pictures, text ect. They are extremely inexpensive and will save your address book for the next time you want to use them. I hope this was helpful!!
Paper Culture is awesome!
I have been designing announcements here and there and am looking to take on a few more projects, and would love to print and mail them out as well. Send me and email and I will get you some examples of things I've done in the past and pricing!
jenkins . brianna at gmail
I use http://www.PremiumPostcards.com both personally and professionally. You can upload all of your own artwork or hire a talented designer (like moi, at http://www.jkndesigns.com) to do it for you. My customers have been quite happy with the results as have I. I think it's the only way my kids birth announcements and our Christmas cards would ever get sent out!
Hi, I work at Paper Culture, so this is obviously biased, but we do provide:
1) Free Mailing Service: we stamp, address and mail your cards for free. You pay only the actual cost of the stamp.
2) You can include a personal message on each card that gets printed on the back. That message can be unique to each person or the same for everyone. This is also free with our Mail & Message service.
For our Mail & Message service, we have an excel template that you can fill out and we'll do all the work for you.
3) Our cards are all flat cards, printed on 100% post consumer recycled paper and come with 100% recycled envelopes.
To see how the service compares to other sites, you can visit http://www.paperculture.com/how-paper-culture-compares.html
Hazel Mail does postcards for something like a dollar per card, including postage. www.hazelmail.com. Also - pingg will send out announcements; I'm not sure how much - www.pingg.com
But this is a great post! I can't wait to check out all the other sites.
I actually plan to work with my favorite Etsy seller (bndesigns)....she did my daughter's first birthday invitations and wraparound labels, so I thought this would be easily a service I could hire her for. All I would do is set up a design for a boy and a girl (although I tend to run gender neutral, so it wouldn't be that tough), email her my addresses, pay for the listing and wait until my photographer had a picture to include, and have them email one another.
My photographer is awesome - she took E's one-year photos and I asked her to email one of the pictures to the local newspaper for an announcement. I had the text written before hand, and it was easy peasy.
Also, I've noticed a few wedding caligraphy vendors do this for brides as well. My motto is don't be afraid to ask!
I do not work at Paper Culture, but I am happy to say that I LOVE them! Unique cards and invites and fantastic customer service. We got tons of raves from my son's 1st birthday invite, and many of my friends have started using them as well!
This is GREAT information! Now I just need to think of an excuse to use all of these services. :) Thanks, everyone!
You can order the envelopes early and address them yourself before baby arrives. In fact, you might as well address two at a time so you've got the thank you cards covered, too. That's what I did for both my kids.
OK, I'm probably done having babies, but I just wanted to say that this is a brilliant idea for busy new parents. I had no idea such a thing existed.
i'm a loyal tinyprints.com customer, they have the cutest invites and announcements. and like a previous commenter mentioned, they provide printing and mailing services.
I own a personal stationary company called Whitefield design most of my clients are weddings but I also do baby announcements and Christmas cards, I do postcard style and letterpress. If I am emailed the list, I can address them and mail them for you. Once given all the information I need I will make you a quote. A few of my baby announcements are on my website at www.whitefielddesign.com and all design ideas are on the blog whitefieldprints.blogspot.com
The announcements {postcard style} run at $50.00 custom design fee or $25.00 already designed and then just the cost of printing 100 double sided postcards is 45.00 (you can pick glossy or matte)
If you do a 4x6 you only need a 0.28cent stamp which saves a few bucks along the way.
I don't work at Paper culture either but I LOVE using them. I used for our birth announcements. All we had to do was put a spreadsheet of names and addresses and a personal note for each. Voila it was all printed, labeled, and sent for us. It's the best.
I am impressed with how organized all of you are. I saved my friends' birth announcements for ideas. Then, when it was my turn, I was out of commission due to an unexpected C-section, and I had decided not to find out the baby's gender. We ended up using e-mail and just attaching a few baby pics to the message. Not what I originally had in mind, but it sufficed to get the word out there.
We just did this with shutterfly.com and the announcements turned out great. We just entered all the addresses in beforehand (or exported them from my computer's address book) picked out the design, then after the baby was born, uploaded a few photos and clicked send! A week later, we started hearing people got our cards. Very easy, and worth the time spent to get it ready.
I used tinyprints. cute cards, great quality. I used them for my christmas cards last year as well.