Print and mail my cards please!

December 19, 2010 2:01 PM

Is there a service that will print and mail my custom christmas cards?

Yes, I am as disorganised as ever. Its December 19th, and I still haven't taken a delightful holiday photo of my toddlers, let alone ordered the cards yet. Last year I managed to take a photo, upload it to flickr, turn it into a christmas card, have the blank cards mailed to me, fill them all out, then mail them out to family and friends. All the grandparents are in Europe, so there's no way any cards will make it on time even if I mailed them today, but the sooner they arrive, the less annoyed the grandparents will be.

There are many sites that allow you to design and print your own custom cards (snapfish etc), and I even found one website in the UK that will fill out and mail cards for me, but they are not cards that use my images, just generic Christmas cards that someone helpfully fills out and mails for me. Is there a site that will take my digital image and turn it into a card, then mail the cards direct to my recipients; instead of mailing them to me, so I can mail them back out again? Bonus if I can enter a custom message in each card, but not totally necessary.

If no such service exists, then someone should go start up this business right now, because I would use it every year!

posted by Joh to Shopping (15 answers total)

Hallmark says they do it.
posted by Gungho at 2:04 PM on December 19, 2010

Here is one
posted by exogenous at 2:05 PM on December 19, 2010

Tinyprints does this; so does astonishingcards.com
posted by dpx.mfx at 2:06 PM on December 19, 2010

http://www.hallmark.com/online/product/photo-cards/
sorry, above link is to Hallmark Photo cards
posted by Gungho at 2:06 PM on December 19, 2010

Best answer: I have used shutterfly to do exactly this. (Link)
posted by notme at 2:15 PM on December 19, 2010

Tiny Prints does this well.
posted by k8t at 2:21 PM on December 19, 2010

Minted will do this.
posted by Kangaroo at 3:38 PM on December 19, 2010

Best answer: I've recently seen television ads for something called Moonpig that does this.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:41 PM on December 19, 2010

I got a lovely card from TinyPrints.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 3:44 PM on December 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Amazingmail also offers this.
posted by fings at 7:50 PM on December 19, 2010

Nthing Shutterfly. I have family friends who live in France who create holiday photo cards from home using Shutterfly. The cards are sent directly from Oakland, CA, I think (the first time we got a Shutterfly card, we were trying to think who the hell we knew in CA), and they're an annual hit in my house.
posted by Mael Oui at 8:08 PM on December 19, 2010

Best answer: Also Overnight Prints offers this service.
posted by carmicha at 8:13 PM on December 19, 2010

+1 for AmazingMail that fings mentioned. I used them a lot in the past (several years ago) and was very impressed at their intersection of price, quality and turn-around time.
posted by devbrain at 8:58 PM on December 19, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for all the helpful answers, AskMefi rocks as always! For future reference:
Tinyprints, Minted, Hallmark and Psprint do not ship outside the US.
Shutterfly and Amazing Mail both ship worldwide, although I have missed their deadlines.
Moonpig can print from the US, UK or Australia.
Overnight Prints has sites in the US, UK, France, Austria, and Germany.
posted by Joh at 10:27 PM on December 19, 2010

I've also used Cardstore in the past and they have sent cards to overseas friends.
posted by stefnet at 6:34 AM on December 20, 2010 [1 favorite]