In my last blog post I wrote about my two favourite card design tools, and this week I’m going behind the scenes again to tell you about the two little workhorses I use for printing greeting cards and getting them to my lovely customers.
Printing greeting cards at home
When I first started selling greeting cards I got them printed at a local print shop. I’d get a whole lot printed out but then find that some didn’t sell and others ran out before I was ready to order more. And for custom orders I started feeling bad that I kept sending one card at a time to be printed out. Not to mention it was also quite expensive to do it this way… So, after I’d made a bit of money with my cards during Christmas 2018, I decided to invest in a printer so I could print most of my cards myself.
It took quite a lot of research, as not many home printers will take the thick 350gsm card stock that I like to use. I wasn’t ready for a giant commercial printer yet and I really didn’t want to start creating flimsy cards… Also, I didn’t want the quality of printing to suffer – the print quality needed to be as good as the paper quality!
My Canon Pixma
I eventually settled on my Canon Pixma and it’s served me really well. It handles my lovely thick card stock with no problems, prints beautifully and is still nice and compact. I still use my local printer for larger orders but it’s made life so much easier to be able to print individual card designs based on how popular they are, with no guesswork up front. And my custom orders now have a much shorter turnaround time.
Are you surprised to hear I print my own greeting cards? You might assume that the cards will look a bit ‘homemade’ but that’s really not the case. My cards are thicker than most that you’d buy in a shop so if anything they look more premium. A lot of the reviews I get on Etsy mention the high quality of my cards. This makes me very happy!
Here’s a video of my terrific Canon printing out an A6 size card… It’s pretty great for such a small printer 😍
It’s now two and a half years old so I’m considering investing in a new (faster) model. I’d keep this one as a back up – I live in constant fear that one day it’ll stop working 😱
Processing orders for my card business
The other piece of office equipment I’ve recently invested in for my card business is a thermal label printer. I’ve been umming and ahhing about getting one for ages. Everyone who has one says it’s life changing when you get regular orders.
My Munbyn Thermal Label Printer
I finally gave in when the one I had my eye on went on special and was in a gorgeous teal colour. I LOVE teal! And now I LOVE my Munbyn thermal printer too 😁
It’s just so incredibly quick! And I don’t have to keep changing the settings on my printer or swapping card stock for labels. I just choose the Munbyn and it spits the labels out instantly. It also doesn’t use any ink (hence ‘thermal’) which is a big cost saving, and the labels are waterproof. I did sometimes worry before that if my orders got rained on after I’d posted them, the ink on the address would smear and they’d go missing. (Yes, I do worry about silly stuff…)
Do you want to see my little Munbyn in action? Here you go…
Pretty speedy, huh?!
So now you’ve met my two greeting card business assistants – aren’t they terrific? 😃
Let me know whether you like these behind the scenes posts or not – are they interesting or yawn inducing? You can message me on Instagram or Facebook, or contact me here.
