I know we have wonderful stationery stores in Charlotte (Buttercup, McKenzie’s, Papitre, Southern Stationers), but for those of you who like to shop from the comfort of your home (especially when you have a new baby), I wanted to share my favorite online company for baby announcements. It’s called
Tiny Prints. My sister-in-law ordered hers with my help and I actually did my Christmas cards through them (they do all sorts of cards but baby announcements are where they started). Both my cards and my sister-in-law’s turned out beautifully. I LOVED them. I just noticed they have cute birthday invites, baby shower invites and more too.Here is why I like them:
1. They are really beautiful designs
2. They are printed on card stock rather than photo paper
3. You can design it online with their easy templates so you can see exactly what it will look like.
4. You can include a photo in the design, and even make it black & white
5. You can chose to have your envelopes pre-shipped so you can address before baby is born when you actually have time (genius!)
6. You can order extra envelopes for those mess-ups
7. Since the photo is right on the card it’s one less piece of collating into envelopes.
Most cards with photos run $1.49 to $2.00 each, so this is a bit expensive but if you are not sending too many it might not be too bad. Be careful also, square shaped cards require extra postage, I steered clear of them for that reason.
Is this a bit too expensive for your taste? The photo sharing sites like Kodak Gallery are getting better and better with designs.
Kodak Gallery has a Martha Stewart line of baby announcements and other occasions that are printed on stationary, not photo paper. They are really nice and you can preview your design. I used a Martha Stewart design for an anniversary party invite for my parents and I was very happy with them. These will run you about $1.20 each but they have special discounts all the time so I got mine for $1.00 each.Also check out Snapfish baby announcements, and Shutterfly has baby announcements too. I noticed that Shutterfly now has “designer cards” that look really nice but they seemed to only have holiday cards so far. It won’t be long before they expand that line to baby. These sites change constantly, keep checking back.
If you are not the online type and need the help of an expert, then definitely go to one of the stationery shops, they will give you great opinions on what looks great. (And sometimes you just need to get out of the house!)
Have you used Tiny Prints? What did you think? Where did you get your announcements?
5 comments
I agree! I loved my announcements from Tiny Prints. They were reasonably priced, but the cardstock made them seem like they were much more expensive. Kodakgallery & Shutterfly are getting so much better now. Shutterfly’s designer cards for the holidays were incredible, but I waited too long to order & there website was slammed so I could never actually place an order. I’ll start earlier next year!
FYI, shutterfly has had too many orders and I think not able to keep up with what they have, we had to send our Christmas cards back 5 times before they got them right! They were very helpful and accomidating, but it was a pain in the old holiday tush!
I used Tiny Prints as well – if you look on line for coupons, you can get % off. I googled “Tiny Prints Coupons” and got a 20% off – which reduced my cost per item to about $1.20 each – which is much cheaper than some local printing.
I used Tiny Prints for Xmas cards and loved them. It was worth the extra $$$ to not have to assemble them! I also ordered stationary from them with my child’s name and they were precious!
We ordered announcements from Tiny Prints recently and when we emailed our picture for the announcement, it didn’t show up as clearly as it should have. It looked ok to us, but we received a call from Tiny Prints telling us it was blurry and asked if we could email another picture. I was impressed that they took the time to really see how it would look. And I’m glad we didn’t spend our money on a blurred announcement!