Learn to Make Greeting Cards Online
Make beautiful custom greeting cards for any occasion and add your personal touch to invitations, thank you notes, holiday cards, and more.
No matter the occasion, personalized cards can be even more special than gifts. Your greeting card is a great opportunity to show your appreciation and tell your loved ones how much you care, whether you’re offering New Year’s greetings or sending a thank you note. With Shutterfly, it’s easy to make a card that looks beautiful and offers everything you want to say. Creating a personalized greeting card design doesn’t take an expert – instead, all you need to do is pick the styles you love and add a bit of personality to make your loved ones smile. Find out how to make greeting cards online for holidays, birthdays, special occasions, and much more.
Greeting Card Ideas for Every Occasion
Make your own cards that stand out from a typical, generic greeting card. Shutterfly’s greeting card template lets you add personal photos for any occasion as well as custom fonts and colors to bring your cards to life. Before designing your card, decide what message you want to convey for the occasion. If it’s a Christmas card or New Year’s card, you may want something flashy to represent the glitter and glow of the holiday season. You can also create more generic greeting cards that incorporate your monogram and personal style. With a custom set of greeting cards, you’ll always be prepared to send well wishes or a thank you card to your friends and colleagues. Browse some of our greeting card ideas below to gain some inspiration for every type of card.
Happy Holidays Cards
If you don’t want to send out individual cards for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years’, you can always design a happy holidays card that shows you’re thinking of loved ones throughout the holiday season. Holiday season’s greetings cards also make sure you’re including friends and family who celebrate all holidays throughout the winter.
To design a holiday greeting card, choose a theme that matches your personality and the message you’d like to send to loved ones. Shutterfly’s holiday card styles include simple, rustic, and modern options, Hanukkah greetings, kids themes, just married templates for newlyweds, and many more. Once you pick a theme, you’ll be able to design your holiday card with photos to match. Use your holiday greeting card to show your family and friends your favorite moments from the year.
Christmas Cards
If you celebrate Christmas, a Merry Christmas Card is one of the best ways to celebrate with loved ones near and far. Some Christmas card ideas include family cards, pet photo cards, baby Christmas cards, and more. For Christmas cards, you may also want to include religious themes and bible verses to share with your family. If you’re planning to send business Christmas cards, keep your styles a bit generic so you can share well wishes while remaining professional with your coworkers and colleagues.
One of the biggest dilemmas during the holidays is what to write in a Christmas card. If you don’t naturally have a way with words, consider the following ideas for your greeting card:
- Bible verses about your favorite parts of Christmas.
- A quick summary of your favorite moments throughout the year.
- Happy holidays and a happy New Year!
- Mention what you’re looking forward to in the New Year.
- Updates on your job, kids, and hobbies.
- Reflect on time spent with the greeting card recipient.
Thanksgiving Cards
Thanksgiving cards aren’t always as popular as Christmas cards, but that doesn’t mean they’re less meaningful. If you do send Thanksgiving cards, they can help you share a holiday greeting in advance and let everyone know you’re thinking of them before the season’s flurry of vacations, shopping, and preparing for the New Year. One great Thanksgiving card idea is to let everyone in your life know why you’re thankful for them. Are they always there to help? Do they offer the best advice to you? Think about the role your loved ones play in your life and take the time to thank them for their time and generosity.
Happy New Year Cards
New Year’s cards give you the chance to start the year off right and send loving greetings to the people in your life. A beautiful New Year’s card can set the tone for your year and help you feel more positive about everything to come. Some Happy New Year card ideas include rustic card styles and newsletter-style cards.
While designing your New Year’s cards, include your favorite family photos throughout the past year. Within your New Year’s greeting, you can include dates and more detail about what your family did throughout the year – be sure to include weddings, graduations, promotions, and anything else you’d like to celebrate! With a New Year’s card, your loved ones will enjoy cherishing the year with you.
Birthday Cards
Birthday greetings are most likely the most common greeting card you send throughout the year. Everyone deserves to feel special on their big day, and a loving card shows you’re thinking of them no matter where you are. Instead of sending a generic card, create a card that’s memorable and focuses on the recipient. Some Happy Birthday card ideas include photos of you and the recipient, photos of them when they were younger (if you have them), and photos of their favorite pets for a fun card that you can say is straight from Scruffy himself!
Struggling over what to write in a birthday card? Depending on your relationship with the recipient, you can make the card funny or more sentimental. If you want to make your friend laugh, include an inside joke you’ve had over the years, or remark on some of your wildest moments together from the past. Sentimental birthday wishes can always include thank-yous for your relationship and anything you appreciate from the birthday girl or guy.
When your birthday rolls around, it’s also important to send out birthday thank you cards. Keep track of what everyone got you for your birthday and thank them for the gift. A quick thank you will show that you appreciate what they got you. Better yet, you can write to them about how you’re using the gift, especially if they don’t live nearby to see you open the present.
Valentine’s Cards
Though you can still make every day special with your partner, Valentine’s is a day to set aside time to come together and be thankful for your partnership. Anyone can pick up store-bought chocolates and a generic Valentine’s card, but a personalized photo card can make the day extra special.
While designing your Valentine’s Day cards, you can choose to feature your favorite photos with your spouse or significant others. If you can’t decide, you can always choose a collage card that has multiple photos of special moments. If you’re married with kids, include your kids’ photos to show your pride in them and your teamwork in raising them together.
Wedding Cards
Wedding stationery includes some of the most important greeting cards in many people’s lives. Many couples save their wedding card as a beautiful memory of their special day, which shows how important it is to make it special and uniquely yours. While designing your wedding cards online, you can choose a wedding card design that’s simple and modern or elegant and timeless.
You can also personalize your cards based on your wedding theme – whether it’s a destination wedding or outdoor ceremony. Shutterfly’s wedding invitations are fully customizable so you can choose your fonts, backgrounds, photo layouts, and more. Include as much or as little text as you need so your guests have the most important information on hand.
Leading up to your wedding, you may also need a variety of other types of stationery and greeting cards, including save the dates and bridal shower cards. Design save the date cards so they match your wedding cards and make it easy for your guests to mark down the date and location. Bridal shower thank you cards are a nice touch to send to your closest friends and family after they help you celebrate your engagement. With The Wedding Shop by Shutterfly, you can also design wedding cards to offer a lovely couple your congratulations if you’re attending as a guest.
Baby Shower Cards
Baby showers are such fun because you can choose a theme and exciting games to go along with it. The baby shower is all about celebrating your pregnancy while enjoying the day with your closest loved ones. When designing baby shower cards, include pregnancy photos or fun kids illustrations to get the whole family excited for the baby on the way. In addition to stylish baby shower invitations, you can also create baby shower thank you cards to match and send to your guests to thank them for attending or bringing gifts.
Thank You Cards
It’s always helpful to have an appreciation card on hand, whether you want to send a simple note to someone or a thank you after an event. Professional thank you cards always look better than generic cards, and they add a sweet touch to your message by showing you put a little more effort into it. If your thank you card design is specially personalized, you don’t have to worry so much about the message inside. More often than not, your family and friends will enjoy the thoughtful touch of a beautiful thank you card design with a simple message. Browse Shutterfly’s thank you card ideas to get a feel for the designs you like or don’t like. From there, create your personal cards by adding photos, text, embellishments, and more.
Sympathy Cards
When there’s a tragedy or death in your life, the best you can do is reach out and show you’re there. Custom sympathy cards let you include photos of your loved ones. Not only are you reaching out to offer condolences, but you’re also helping to celebrate someone’s life. Not sure what to write in your sympathy card? Make sure the recipient knows how to reach you if they want to talk. You can also include a simple anecdote about the loved one who’s passed to help them smile in remembrance. Creating custom cards for loss is a simple and easy way to offer someone a little bit of light when they’re going through a hard time.
Graduation Cards
Graduations are one of the most memorable times in parents’ and children’s lives. Whether you’re graduating from high school or college, you can celebrate with the whole family by sending out a graduation announcement or graduation card inviting your friends to a party. Graduation cards let you keep the extended family connected about you or your children’s studies and their future plans. In return, you may receive well wishes and graduation gifts to start you off on the next chapter. In return, you can also create graduation thank you cards to show your appreciation for the communal celebration.
Fun Tips for Creating Custom Greeting Cards
While designing your own greeting cards online, all you need is a little bit of inspiration and creativity. Adding in your information is easy, but it’s the fun part that includes designing your cards and making them stand out from the rest. If you need more help creating greeting cards, consider these tips as you’re designing with Shutterfly:
- If all else, make sure the card is easy to read
- Try to make each card specific to the recipient
- When in doubt, include quotes or song lyrics that they’ll love
- Photo cards always make a beautiful and personalized design
- Date your special greeting cards so recipients can keep them and look back on them
- Pair your greeting cards with custom address labels and stickers for an even more personalized touch
- Always keep a pack of simple thank you cards for multiple occasions
How to Make Greeting Cards Online With Shutterfly
The Shutterfly greeting card maker is always easy to use, and it makes it fast to create multiple greeting cards online. To design your custom card, first choose the occasion that it’s for. From there, you’ll have a variety of unique designs to choose from, or you can always upload your own design. For instance, Shutterfly’s Christmas Card selections include 25 different themes you can choose from and begin to personalize. Once you’ve selected your style and theme, follow these easy steps:
- Choose your quantity of cards, trim, and paper type
- Upload your photos to the Shutterfly card maker
- Click and drag photos into your greeting card template
- Include text if an area is available
- Customize your card fonts
- Preview and check out! If all looks good, you’ll have your greeting cards sent straight to your door
Wrapping Up
Making personalized greeting cards is easy, and it can take just a matter of minutes. The next time you have a holiday or special occasion coming up, consider how you can use recent photos to create a greeting card that’s more special than a store-bought option. While designing your own greeting cards online, you can have fun with personalization options and beautiful styles. Turn your cards into more than a to-do list – make them a lasting memory that your loved ones can keep up to enjoy year-round.
Additional Resources:
- Shop Personalizing Greeting Cards
- Shop Seasonal Greeting Cards
- Shop Wedding Invitations, Save The Date Cards, and Engagement Cards
