Special life moments deserve special greeting cards. Whether you’re sending birthday invitations for your little one, save the date cards for your wedding, or graduation announcements to honor your grad — these important occasions deserve a card with your personal touch. Adding your sentiment and photo to a greeting card tells your recipient that your card could only come from you. Your personalized card will turn any occasion into a memory to treasure forever.
Make your own custom greeting card that tells your story. Choose the card design that fits your event’s theme, include the details with custom text, and upload a photo to add the finishing touch. Follow this guide on how to make personalized cards that suit your style.
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How to Make a Personalized Card
When it comes to making greeting cards and invitations that are sure to delight your friends and family, the key is to personalize them to you and your taste. Maybe you want a birth announcement card with several photos of your newborn. Or, maybe you want to send a holiday greeting with vibrant colors and glitter. Whether your style is classically elegant or colorfully festive, the possibilities are endless with Shutterfly.
1. Pick a Photo
The best personalized cards feature a special photo that represents the occasion. For a graduation announcement, choose the graduate’s favorite picture from the school year. Maybe they’re repping their new college’s sweatshirt or posing in their high school sports team uniform. For a Mother’s Day card, opt for a sweet photo of Mom and the kids. Whatever the occasion, adding a photo will turn your card into a meaningful keepsake.
2. Choose Your Card Design
Your personalized card design is what will make your card stand out and feel unique. With Shutterfly’s extensive collection of card designs available for any holiday or occasion, there’s something for everyone. Customize your card by choosing your favorite trim options, card size, card paper, add-ons, and colors. Personalized card designs include:
- Foil Stamped Cards: Foil stamped cards help add a splash of metallic color to an otherwise traditional greeting card. With foil colors available in gold, rose gold, and iridescent, your card will pop among the rest.
- Personalized Foil Cards: Similar to foil stamped cards, personalized foil cards allow you to customize your greeting with the special feature.
- Glitter cards: These cards are the perfect way to add a little glitz to your greeting. You can add glitter to the card’s text, design elements, or borders, so there’s something unique for everyone.
- Gate Fold cards: Looking for a card with a reveal for the recipients? If so, gatefold cards are unique greetings that open up from the center to reveal your message. They’re also perfect for when you need more space for photos.
3. Start Creating Your Personalized Card
After choosing your card design, it’s time to create! Upload the photo you would like to use for your card, then add them to the project. Once your photos are uploaded to the project, drag and drop them into their desired spaces using Shutterfly’s card maker platform. Make sure to adjust and crop any images so that they print exactly the way you want.
After all the images are placed and edited, you’ll need to edit the available text boxes. If you’re sending holiday cards, make sure your family’s name is correct along with your seasonal greeting. When designing a birth announcement, be careful to get all of the information about your little one’s arrival correctly onto the card. Once you’re happy with your card’s text, edit the layout and design to make your card perfect.
You can also choose from different background patterns, pre-addressed envelopes, envelope liners, and other add-ons. Not only will this help speed up your mailing process, but it also keeps all your stationery elements matching and uniform.
4. Review Your Card
Don’t forget to review your project when you’re all done. Reviewing your card and envelope will help you catch any spelling mistakes or design errors before they arrive in your mail. You can also use this opportunity to add matching stationery add-ons to your cart, such as address labels, personalized stamps, and more.
Customizing Wedding Cards
When planning a wedding, you’ll want to send out both save the date cards and wedding invitations. When customizing your save the date card, make sure to include three things: the wedding date, the city of the event, and the name of the couple. Then, add on a photo of the two of you for a picture-perfect save the date card. You can also include an extra line for information on a formal invitation, the wedding website, or hotels.
Wedding invitations tell your guests the who, what, when, and where of your wedding. Design custom wedding invitations that include the couple’s names, date and time, and where the ceremony and reception will take place. These cards also carry the wedding theme. Choose between rustic-styled invites, destination-themed styles, and more to tell the story you want to tell. You can also include other key pieces of information, such as the dress code or where to find your gift registry.
If unforeseen circumstances occur and you need to change the date of your wedding, use our editable sentiment cards to update your guests with a new save the date card or wedding invitation. When customizing these cards, you can change the text from “save the date” to “We’ve changed our date!” and “details to follow.” If you have to change the date of your big day due to the coronavirus pandemic, Shutterfly will reprint any event-based cards you create with us for free, honoring our Date-Change Promise.
Making Personalized Cards For Graduation
Honor your graduate with custom graduation cards to celebrate their hard work and achievements. Design graduation announcements that fit your grad’s personality to send to friends and family. Include their full name, the name of their school, and a photo of them from the school year.
While graduation announcements typically announce the class year, adding the exact date is optional. If the exact date is included in a particular design and plans are uncertain, it can easily be edited out or changed to something less specific such as “Spring 2020.” If you already sent graduation invitations or announcements and need to change the date or details of your event due to the coronavirus, Shutterfly will reprint your cards for free.
More Greeting Card Occasions
Greeting cards are a way to keep in touch as well as express congratulations, condolences, love, and gratitude. With Shutterfly’s unique personalized cards, you can make a loved one’s day by sending them a piece of snail mail. From invitations to announcements to thinking of you cards, you can design a card that will make your recipient feel special.
Baby Cards
When you’re welcoming a new family member into the world, share the news with custom photo cards. Whether you’re designing a baby shower invitation or a birth announcement, these beautiful baby cards will be kept as sentimental mementos forever.
Seasonal Cards
Celebrate every holiday and special occasion with a unique photo card. Shutterfly offers holiday cards to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Easter, New Year’s, and more. Honor Mom and Dad with custom cards for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to make them smile. Whatever the occasion, you can personalize your card to make it truly yours.
Birthday Cards
Create fun and festive stationery to celebrate loved ones’ birthdays. Whether you’re sending a friend a birthday greeting or hosting a virtual birthday party, make their day memorable with custom birthday party invitations or birthday greeting cards. From cool cards for teenagers to a toddler’s festive birthday bash — you can find a card that will fit their style.
Thank You Cards
Show your gratitude to friends and family with custom thank you cards. Choose from one of Shutterfly’s thank you cards for several occasions, including weddings, graduations, holidays, and more. Don’t know what to write on your thank you card? Follow these tips for thank you card wording.
Religious Cards
Make your religious celebrations as meaningful as possible with customizable cards and invitations. Celebrate special milestones with faith-based stationery like invitations to a baptism or first communion or bar and bat mitzvah invitations. On holidays, send out thoughtful religious cards to friends and family with a photo of your family and a religious quote to add a special touch.
Final Thoughts on Personalized Cards
Whether you’re sending elegant bridal shower invitations to the special friends in your life or a funny Father’s Day card to Dad, your card comes with so much love when it’s personalized by you. The people in your life will adore your personalized card because it was designed with care. When you get creative with beautiful photos and custom greetings, your cards become forever keepsakes that your recipients will look back on for years to come.
