Thursday, November 19, 2009

Free Greeting Cards

I love going to the store and looking at all the cards when I need one for a special occasion. But then I see how much some of these cards cost, it's pretty crazy! I have seen regular greeting cards cost more than $5 a piece. Granted, not all of them cost that much, and there are ways to get nice greeting cards for a much more reasonable price. However, I often find that the cards available for $.99 are pretty well picked over, and there isn't much of a selection.

If you are on a tight budget and need a card, there are ways to do it for next to nothing. There is always the dollar store, they might have them pretty cheap. If you have kids, they can make a greeting card for whatever occasion you need one for. Some occasions may not be appropriate for this, however. You could always make your own greeting card as well. If you are good at things like scrapbooking, this is an excellent way to save on greeting cards and add a nice personal touch.

Then there's always the internet. There are plenty of sites out there that are devoted to free printable greeting cards. Some of them want your personal information before they will let you print a card. I tend to steer clear of these because then it opens up my email for junk mail. We just used a site today that looks pretty good. My daughter has a birthday party to go to, and she found a card she liked at http://www.123printcards.com/ . They even have cute little envelopes to make to go along with your card. There is also http://www.printable-cards.gotfreecards.com/ or http://www.mintprintables.com/ . There are other sites that are free, such as http://www.bluemountain.com/ but you have to become a member to use those. Happy card making!

4 comments:

Cindy Skillman said...

Hi, Ali

Great ideas! I like shopping at the dollar stores, but I hadn't thought about looking there for cards. You don't always want to spend hours putting together a card, so that's a good way to take care of things.

If you have time, you can make some pretty cool cards on free image editing software like Gimp or paint.net, too. It takes some experimentation to learn how to use these programs, but if you like working with images, it's a lot of fun. Then you can use your digital photographs and really personalize the card.

Love, Cindy

thethriftyhousewife said...

Hey Cindy, thanks for your additional ideas! Actually, many times the dollar stores have the cards 2/$1.00. I know Dollar Giant does, anyhow. That's not a bad deal at all!

Lynne said...

Great information. Although the computer makes it easy and cheap to send virtual greeting cards, I do think that people still need to get mail from the mailman. And I like to select greeting cards to match the personality I'm sending it to or to remind the person of something fun that we did in the past.
Cousin Lynne

thethriftyhousewife said...

Lynne, good point!