The front of our holiday card this year from Vista Print. Photo by Kristin Callahan of Adelaide Photography.
If you have kids and send out holiday cards, it's likely you may want to feature their photo on or inside yours. It's a great way to keep loved ones and old friends up to date on your kids' beauty and growth. I'm not knocking cards with baby Jesus, Mary, dreidels, menorahs, Kwanzaa flags, peaceful doves, Santa or snowflakes, and we appreciate those that we receive very much. But my family and I love receiving photo cards of growing families and smiling kids during the holidays, and those are the kind we send out too.
Last year I reviewed several different holiday photo card companies, based soley upon my experience ordering and purchasing photo cards out of pocket from from Pictage, Snapfish, Shutterfly and Vista Print over the years since having kids. (Here's that exhaustive review of the pros, cons and price differences. Prices have undoubtedly changed since last year.) I also priced out options at from Tiny Prints. At the end of my review I concluded that Vista Print had the lowest price for great design options and that's who showed up on my American Express bill.
This year, Vista Print contacted me with a special discount for readers of APISS: 50% off the published prices of holiday cards!
The Vista Print peeps found me when I linked to them last year. Guess corporations like it when you, unbidden, help their marketing plans. But even though this post sounds like they've paid me to gush about them, I received simply the same discount as you guys above, plus an additional 20 free cards to review/as a thank you (a $15.98 value. Which is fabulous and I am grateful to receive. But this year we ordered 350 more cards, paid for totally out of pocket. So there's still a nice Vista Print charge on ye olde AmEx, don't worry.)
But even if they hadn't contacted me, gifted me some cards and given all of us that read APISS 50% off the published price, I would have used Vista Print again. Their prices are still way cheaper than most holiday cards out there, and there's the cool option of being able to place a second photo and greeting on the backside of your card for a low price (free if you order a small number of cards.) You can also upload multiple photos to the front or back of your card and you can customize your greeting to wish your recipients whatever type of holiday, wish for peace or corny saying you please...in the font and color you like best.
The paper quality is great and you can choose glossy or matte finishes. I also think the photo resolution is outstanding for a company that does not specialize in photography. If you upload a photo with resolution that will not translate well to the card, their software will tell you. You can order various sizes of cards, flat or folded, and upload multiple photos to the front or back. You can also turn a design so that it's vertically oriented with your greeting below the photo, or horizontally oriented with your greeting next to your photo. Vista Print has really expanded and updated the available options for customers to customize their holiday cards.
This year there are also TONS more patterns and designs new to Vista Print for 2009, and I really think they have improved the chic-ness of their designs to compete with the upscale look of card designs on sites like Tiny Prints. But instead of $1.25 a card, usually the cheapest option at the haute-y looking sites, Vista Print's cost is a mere .37 per card for a look I think is just as fancy.
The back of our holiday card from Vista Print. Photo by Kristin Callahan of Adelaide Photography. Cute saying was one of the suggestions of the Vista Print software.
Additionally, Vista Print is offering all APISS readers lots of free holiday gift stuff HERE. No joke, totally free stuff! I just ordered myself free sticky notes, a personalized note pad, return address stamp, a photo wall calendar for the grandparents...free family holiday gifts and stocking stuffers!
So, even though they didn't pay me to do it, I've totally been drinking the Vista Print Kool-Aid. But it's just so tasty...and cheap. I heartily recommend Vista Print for adorable and reasonable and high quality holiday photo cards, and again, click this link to get 50% off!
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