Digital Printing Online

I really enjoy it when our friends sent us a birth announcement with a photo of the baby and all of the statistic about his/her birth.  I recently came across a website with brand new birth announcements that let you place up to 3 photos on the cards.  The website is www.astonishingcards.com and has 3 different sizes of cards.  The large cards are really nice because you can put a couple of large pictures of the baby and even the proud parents.  Their newest size is an invitation size card that is mailed in an envelope and is just like the big card only smaller.  They also have standard postcards which are really handy and inexpensive.

One of the things that is such a time saver is that they will actually print and mail all of these custom cards for you.  All you have to do is upload your address book, upload a couple of pictures and write a short note with all of the birth details and viola, the card is done.  New mothers have enough to do and this new service puts the joy back into sending out birth announcements.

Baby shower invitations with photos of either the parents or the child are a really nice personal way to invite people to this joyous event.  Astonishingcards (www.astonishingcards.com) has both invitation size folded cards that are mailed in envelopes or inexpensive (but very nice) postcard baby shower invitations.  With their new folded invitations, you can use up to 3 photos on the card or none at all.   The postcard baby shower invitations allow you to use up to two different photos on the card.

Most invitation companies will only print your cards and ship them back to you, but Astonishingcards will not only print your baby shower invitations but mail them for you as well.  Their automated address book upload is easy to use, but if you do get stuck, they have really nice people to help you out.  With this automated feature, it makes it really easy to send out the baby shower invitations.

If you are like me, you wait until the very last minute to send your Christmas cards.  You are so busy you just can’t find the time, but you are still obligated to send them out.  Astonishingcards (http://www.astonishingcards.com/christmascards.aspx) has a solution for you.  They send out all of the Christmas postcards the next business day and the full size folded Christmas cards within two days.  And yes, they not only print the cards but they address and mail them for you.  You can actually get your whole list of cards completed in about 10 – 15 minutes.

So, if you’re stressed out over sending your Christmas cards this year, check out Astonishingcards, you’ll be glad you did.

The easiest and fastest way to send personalised multiple photo Christmas cards is from http://www.astonishingcards.com/christmascards.aspx.  In the past, Astonishingcards only offered Christmas postcards.  This year they have added folded greeting cards with personalised photo Christmas cards that are mailed in personalised envelopes. What was great is that was so fast and easy.  If you already have your photo(s) picked out (you can use up to 3 photos) and have them on your computer, it is really easy to upload to create the personalised photo Christmas card.  One really unique feature is that depending on which style of photo Christmas card that you send, you may be able to use multiple photos.  One large Christmas photo on the front, and a second smaller Christmas photo on the inside or back of the photo Christmas card.

Our friends are using this web site for their photo Christmas cards as well and you know it has to be easy if Bubba can create and mail a card.  As you might imagine, Bubba isn’t his real name (to protect the guilty!) and he is a real smart guy (formerly president of some large companies) but operating a computer is not one of his strong suits.  So you know, if he can create a card in just a couple of minutes, you know almost anyone can do it.  What he and his wife really like is that Astonishingcards even mails the cards for them. 

So you got busy during the Holidays and didn’t get your Christmas cards mailed on time, again.  Well, now there is a solution for sending out last minute Christmas cards.  Astonishingcards (http://www.astonishingcards.com/christmascards.aspx) has full size Christmas cards as well as standard postcard sized Christmas cards that mail the next business day.

Some of us get overwhelmed at work with end of the year promotions and beginning of the year budgeting that we wait until the last minute to send our Christmas cards.  On the other hand, there are some of you, and you know who you are, that just procrastinate and wait until the last minute to send your Christmas cards.

This year, make it easy on yourself and use the automated services of Astonishingcards and let them send a premium quality card out for you.  Yes, you heard that correctly, they will print your custom, personalized last minute Christmas card, address it and mail it for you.  In fact, if you have your address book handy, you can probably create the card in less than 5 minutes and be done with it for another year, and look like a hero for sending such a nice card.

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Creating multiple photo Christmas cards with Astonishingcards (www.astonishingcards.com/personalizedphotochristmascards.aspx) is as easy as 1-2-3.  This innovative program has dozens of choices of professionally designed Christmas Greeting cards, but also let’s you customize each card with multiple photos.

If you want to use a Christmas frame instead of a Greeting card style card for your multiple photo Christmas cards, you will find multiple choices of those as well.

These multiple photos are printed quite large (up to 5 ¾ “ x 4”) and are a wonderful way to share your photos with family and friends.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to send photo Christmas cards is from www.astonishingcards.com.  For the past two years, we have sent our Christmas cards using this service.  In the past, we have used their photo Christmas postcards.  This year they have added folded photo Christmas cards that are mailed in personalized envelopes. What was great is that was so fast and easy.  If you already have your photo picked out and have it on your computer, it is really easy to upload to create the photo Christmas card.  One really unique feature is that depending on which style of photo Christmas card that you send, you may be able to use multiple photos.  One large Christmas photo on the front, and a second smaller Christmas photo on the inside of the photo Christmas card.

Some of our friends are using this web site for their photo Christmas cards as well and you know it has to be easy if Bubba can create and mail a card.  As you might imagine, Bubba isn’t his real name (to protect the guilty!) and he is a real smart guy (formerly president of some large companies) but operating a computer is not one of his strong suits.  So you know, if he can create a card in just a couple of minutes, you know almost anyone can do it.  What he and his wife really like is that Astonishingcards even mails the cards for them.  Mailing out 110 photo Christmas cards with only about 10 minutes of work really appeals to he and his wife.

Custom Christmas cards for business (or personal use) are as easy as 1-2-3 from Astonishingcards (www.astonishingcards.com) Astonishingcards has a unique approach for creating cards.  They start with professionally designed cards that can then be customized and personalized.

One option is to include one or more custom photos of the staff, building or product.  Real estate or insurance agents and interior designers will love the opportunity to customize their cards by including their own picture.  Now of course there are a lot of us who have faces perfect for radio, but still, our customers from out of state might still like to know what we look like.

One of the time saving aspects of these custom cards is that if you want to have everyone sign every card, you can now have everyone sign a single sheet of paper (one time!) in any color ink that they wish to use.  You then scan that sheet and upload it into the design to make it appear as though everyone signed each Christmas card.  They look totally realistic!  A former employee told me that at the advertising agency she worked at recently,  took most of a day to have everyone sign all of the cards that they were sending to their clients.  A big waste of time when it could have been completed with a single signature.

In future blogs we will talk about some of the other options available for custom business Christmas cards from Astonishingmail.

Astonishingcards (www.astonishingcards.com) announced this week that they were going to add full size, folded and personalized Christmas Cards.  Previously, Astonishingcards had strictly produced picture postcards or greeting card style postcards.

While this announcement comes at Christmas time, the intention is for Astonishingcards to make folded cards available for all occasions.  Because the cards are easily customized and personalized, they are one of a kind cards that are cherished by the recipient.

Business holiday cards are very important for showing your customers and prospects that you care about them as people, not just as a source of income.  With that said however, there are so many cards sent for the Christmas holidays (2,000,000,000+) that some people feel they get lost in the pile of greeting cards.

Some businesses use www.astonishingcards.com or its sister site, www.astonishingmail.com/christmascards.aspx

to send either holiday postcards or greeting cards.  But the holiday may be different than you imagine.  Some businesses send Halloween cards simply because it is fun and nobody else is sending a card.  A great way for them to stand out from the crowd.  Thanksgiving is becoming a more popular time to send a greeting card for the same reason that you get noticed more.  Regardless of which holiday you choose, sending a holiday card is just plain good business.

One of the easiest and least expensive ways to send photo Christmas postcards is from www.astonishingcards.com.  For the past two years, we have sent our holiday greetings using this service.  What was so nice was that it was fast and easy.  If you already have your photo picked out and have it on your computer, it is really easy to upload to create the photo postcard.  One really unique feature is that depending on which style of postcard that you send, you may be able to use multiple photos.  One large Christmas photo on the front, and a second smaller photo for the back of the Christmas postcard.

Some of our friends are using this web site for their photo Christmas cards as well and you know it has to be easy if Bubba can create and mail a card.  As you might imagine, Bubba isn’t his real name (to protect the guilty!) and he is a real smart guy (formerly president of some large companies) but operating a computer is not one of his strong suits.  So you know, if he can create a card in just a couple of minutes, you know almost anyone can do it.  What he and his wife really like is that Astonishingcards even mails the cards for them.  Mailing out 110 photo Christmas postcards with only about 10 minutes of work really appeals to he and his wife.

Christmas card postcards from www.astonishingcards.com is really an easy and inexpensive way to mail your Christmas cards this year.  While many people still like to hand address (let me just say right here that many people feel obligated by tradition to hand write the addresses or hand sign their signatures on Christmas cards, very few people LIKE to hand address them), the far easier way to mail them is to have Astonishingcards address and mail them for you.

They make it so easy and inexpensive you’ll wonder why you haven’t done this before.  We have used these cards for the last two years and have gotten tons of compliments from those who received them.  Some of our friends have also used them and are thrilled that they saved a whole bunch of money versus traditional cards, but even happier that it only took a couple of minutes to send out their 120 cards.  They much preferred the Holiday parties over hand writing all of those Christmas cards.

A couple of years ago, we sent personalized Holiday Cards that had our picture on the back of the card.  It was really easy to do and they looked great.  We used the same system through www.astonishingcards.com last year as well.  Since we already had the Holiday list in their automated system, it only took about 5 minutes to send to our entire list.

We found it to be especially nice that you can choose a professionally designed greeting card style front and then upload your own picture to the back of the card and write your own Holiday greeting.  It also gives you the option of a postcard style with a larger photo on the front of the card and it uses a Holiday themed border.  It also gives you an option of placing a second photo on the back of the card.

Each card is personalized by automatically addressing each card in your Holiday list.  It makes it really fast, easy and inexpensive to send Holiday Cards to everybody in your holiday card database.

Two years ago, we sent personalized Christmas postcards that had our picture on the back of the card.  It was really easy to do and they looked great.  Guess what, we used the same system through www.astonishingcards.com last year as well.  Since we already had the Christmas list in their automated system, it only took about 5 minutes to send to over 100 people.

What we found to be especially nice is that you can choose a professionally designed greeting card style front and then upload your own picture to the back of the card and write your own Christmas greeting.  However, it also gives you the option of a postcard style with a larger photo on the front of the card and it uses a Christmas themed border.  It also gives you an option of placing a second photo on the back of the card.

Each card is personalized by automatically addressing each card in your Christmas list.  It makes it really fast, easy and inexpensive to send Christmas postcards to everyone on your list.

I saw a cartoon in this mornings paper (July 27, 2006) with a group of kids sitting around the camp fire telling “ghost” stories.  One of the boys says to the other kids, with looks of sheer terror on their faces, that he had just seen a Back to School flyer.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the marketing is already gearing up even though it is the middle of the summer.

Last year we noticed that a lot of people sent photo postcards with pictures of their kids with their new school clothes.  Of course with today’s fashions, who can tell that these are expensive new clothes.  In any event, an easy and inexpensive way to share this event with family and friends is to send the cards from www.astonishingcards.com.  This Web site has some very nice school themed picture frames and will make a nice keepsake for you and your family.

Many baby shower hostesses find that it is a pain in the butt to organize the entire event with cooking, cleaning and writing and sending out all of the invitations.  First of all, you may not know half of the people you are inviting to your home.  Since you want to make a good impression, you’ve got your husband down on his hands and knees scrubbing toilets with a toothbrush.  I know in our household, my best response is not “why do I have to do that”, but rather a “yes dear” with a smile on my face.

I’m not sure about the whole toothbrush thing, but I do know that you have to clean very carefully when you have friends like ours.  One of the husbands would actually come to our house and perform a “white glove” test just to see if he could catch us with any dirt anywhere in our immaculately cleaned house.  Since my wife knew he would do this, it made her clean all the more.  Which comes full circle and now you know why I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing the toilets.  It’s all because of my buddy and the white glove test.  But I digress.

The www.astonishingcards.com web site doesn’t cook or clean for you, but it provides a really easy to use program to create baby shower invitations.  The hostesses that use the program find it to be fast, fun and affordable to send the invitations using these full color postcards.  Astonishingcards provides a whole bunch of great looking cards, and then they not only print the cards, but mail them for you as well.

Hmmm.  Maybe you should just do the fun stuff like sending the invitations and let someone else do the cooking and cleaning.

Wedding announcements come in a wide variety of styles, shapes, sizes and price.  At www.astonishingcards.com we have seen a large number of people use our full color photo postcards as wedding announcements or save the date cards.

Many of the cards use the optional photo feature and generally show the couple having fun on vacation someplace or in some cases in a more formal setting.  However, since these cards are informal, the photos are for the most part informal as well.  One of the big benefits of these cards is that bride to be can upload her whole invitation list with just a couple of mouse clicks.  Astonishingcards then prints and mails them the next day.  It is a wonderful time saver for couples planning their wedding as well as an attractive yet inexpensive way to announce the date.

Every month I write on the curiosities of all of our country’s national observances.  Here are just a couple of them.  The first one is American Beer Month.  One of my golf buddies loves beer.  He will crack one open for our 9:00 tee time and have one every couple of holes along the way.  He will be thrilled when I tell him this is National Beer Month and I’m sure he’ll open another.

The second national observance is Baked Beans Month.  Now I’m sure baked beans have a ton of nutritional value, but when you combine them with beer.  Let’s not go there.

The third observance is National Hot Month.  What could be better than combining 3 of America’s favorite foods & beverages?  Hot dogs, baked beans and an ice cold beer.  They all occur in the month of July and I would guess that a lot of you combined these three things on your 4^th of July celebration.

It is always interesting to see the creativity of the users of www.astonishingcards.com.  There are customers who will send their invitations for an event such as a birthday party or a wedding invitation and then follow up with a photo Thank You card.  Sometimes they include funky photos of them in the ocean with a sign that says Thank You or a back yard full of kids having fun.  Some people will even take a photo of the gift and print the photo of the gift on the Thank You card as a special way to say thanks.  What they all have in common is that they are an easy to use and inexpensive full color postcard format that can be personalized to each individual.  With their address book already in place from mailing the invitations, the Thank You cards are a snap and you don’t even have to type in the addressing information.  It’s a great time saver for busy people.

Now is the time of year that we celebrate our independence on the 4^th of July.  We need to remember all of the troops that are scattered around the country and around the globe who are defending our rights as Americans.

If you have a friend or a family member, please remember them by sending a card or a letter.  Today, July 3, 2006 Xerox launched a new website at www.LetsSayThanks.com that allows anyone to send a free printed postcard to the troops.  It uses designs from children and will let you write your own message.  It is a very nice service to stay in touch with the men and women in the military.

While www.astonishingcards.com does not offer a free service it does offer a way for family members in the US to send a personalized and customized photo postcard with patriotic themes to members of the military anywhere in the world.  The unique part of this card is you can use your own photograph on either the front of the card, the back of the card, or both.  It becomes a nice keepsake that they can carry with them rather than just a fleeting image from an email.  The card can also be sent by troops out of the country to any address in the US.  Even though this service is not free, it is a pretty neat way to inexpensively send a card with your own photos on it to loved ones who may have been away for a long time.