Monday, November 16, 2009

5x7 print and envelope tips

Most of my designs that are for invitations, birth announcements, or Christmas cards end up being printed as a 5x7 photo. Sending the design file to a digital photo lab is always easy, and a 5x7 card, in my opinion, looks best. If you will be printing a Redbud Christmas card or another design in the future, here are a few price comparisons for 5x7 prints:

  • Sam's Club - 38 cents each for one hour / 34 cents each for multi-day
  • Costco - 39 cents each
  • Shutterfly - on sale now for 50 cents each, normally 99 cents each
  • Walmart - 58 cents each
  • Snapfish - as low as 59 cents each for 50+ prints
  • Walgreens - $1.59 each (although I think they go down to $1.00 if you order a certain amount)
5x7's are a bit high maintenance when it comes to finding envelopes, but there are several options. Envelopes that fit a 5x7 perfectly are called A7, but they are hard to find in stores. Something I have done in the past is buy a cheap box of generic Christmas or greeting cards and use the envelopes from that box, as they usually fit a 5x7 perfectly. I have also bought "invitation" envelopes from an office store. They are a bit bigger than a 5x7 print (5-3/4" x 8-3/4"), but they work just fine, and are relatively easy to find. My friend Annalee just happened to ask the salesperson at Walgreens about getting 5x7 envelopes with her prints, and he told her that he would give them to her for free as long as she printed her cards there. (As Annalee told me, it never hurts to ask!) Just in case your Walgreens worker isn't as friendly, here are some options and price comparisons for invitation envelopes:
My goal is to eventually provide printing services (complete with free envelopes with your order!), but until then, I hope this is helpful! Feel free to leave a comment if you have any other helpful tips or suggestions. As always, thanks for your support of Redbud Designs!

14 comments:

  1. Also, I forgot to tell you this about the envelopes, I just asked the photo center at Walmart if they had any 5x7 envelopes and they just gave them to me for free since I had ordered all my prints from them...and they gave me like 100 of them so I am set for Christmas too. I don't know if all Walmarts would do this, but is worth a shot!

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  2. My Sam's club will give them to me if I print 5x7 prints there. Sometimes they even charge me the card price which is cheaper than the individual 5x7 print price.

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  3. thanks SO much, erin and sara! and you are so welcome, wendy! :)

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  4. just wanted to update anyone who's checking in on these comments. i went to sam's today to see if they would give me the 5x7 envelopes with my prints...but they recently (as in the past couple of days) changed their 5x7 holiday cards to 6x7 cards, so they told me they don't even have 5x7 envelopes anymore. not sure if that is true...but that's the story i got.

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  5. I was trying to save money last year and ordered by card on the 4 x 6 prints at Walmart. The cards printed out fine, I just had to recrop it a little before it printed to make sure it was centered. I'm not sure if this would work on every design. You'd have to make sure the card looked okay when it was resized. But it worked for me.

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  6. just a tip as far as envelopes - most larger cities have a paper distributor that carries the envelopes. they would be a much larger quantity, but are usually cheaper than the retail stores yuo listed. i used to work at athens paper in nashville & have gotten several boxes from them since. I know they have a "cash" account for people that just need 1 thing & don't have accounts with them.

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  7. thanks for providing information . my own friends need it. thanks once again..........

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  8. Awesome! post its really helps me too much thanks.

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