Completely lost! Printer advice for greetings cards!

[owls]

Hi there I am hoping I have posted this in the right place! I am currently looking for a printer that will print greetings cards. I originally wanted the cards to be good thick quality like 350/300gsm .. this I have learnt is impossible .. I have contacted Canon who said they don't have any commercial printers that can do this and HP are pretty much the same. I can't afford to buy a printer which is hundreds as I am just starting out.

I have accepted I will either have to have them printed externally by a printing company or lower the gsm that I want to print on, even then I am struggling to find anything that will print on anything more than 200gsm.

If anyone could help or recommend a printer or printing company that would be amazing as I have been researching for about a week and feel like pulling my hair out!!!

Thank you !

[pisquee]

imagingcentre is where we outsource our greetings cards to - works out around 20-25p per card inc envelope and cello, for a batch of 1000 with upto 20 designs.

[webtrekker]

My Canon ix6850 A3+ printer easily handles 300gsm card. Print quality is excellent and can print borderless. I even print daily on magnetic sheets.

You can buy pre-creased greeting cards but my advice would be to buy decent quality card and score the folds yourself with a scoring board.

A contour cutter will open up a whole new world in being able to produce cards with contoured outlines and cutouts.

[owls]

Thank you both i'll have a look at both these options

[raydavies]

I also have a canon ix6850 as well as a canon IP8750 both of which print happily on 300gm card.

Ray

[bubbleimages]

When we did greeting cards, we were happily using 400GSM extra white card with the ix6850. Easily taking it through.

For just over a £100 it is a great printer for such cards, if selling more though would go for outsourcing such as TradePrint or imagecentre.

[owls]

Thanks .. I'm leaning towards getting that one as I would just be selling on Etsy I don't think I will be selling loads any time soon!

[wayupnorth]

Worth looking at one of the card creasing machines on eBay. Manual versions expensive and they work really well.

[webtrekker]

Thanks .. I'm leaning towards getting that one as I would just be selling on Etsy I don't think I will be selling loads any time soon!

It's great that you have an enthusiastic approach, but don't pin too many hopes on making money through Etsy. My own experiences with Etsy are poor, to say the least.

[owls]

It's great that you have an enthusiastic approach, but don't pin too many hopes on making money through Etsy. My own experiences with Etsy are poor, to say the least.

Thank you, I currently sell things on my etsy shop already so I'm just adding to it. I certainly know it can be slow going so I think going to get some cards outsourced first and see how they go and if they sell then look into a printer and also some other avenues of where to sell them