Simple & Elegant Anytime Cards

I love sending and receiving holiday cards. And since becoming a parent, I have fully embraced that it doesn't really matter when you send them -- the point is to reconnect in a way that matters to you whenever you have the chance to do it. (For example, one year we sent our holiday greetings in March...we had many people tell us they loved receiving cards off peak season!) As has become the norm, my holiday cards did not make it out before Christmas (the last batch is going out in the mail today), and it was so delightful to create them and even hand write the addresses. And Pinhole Press made the process absurdly easy.
Last year, Lindsey shared about her favorable experience creating Pinhole's photo books, note pads, and note cards. When Pinhole approached me about trying out their holiday cards (they sent me a shopping code to cover part of the cost; I paid the balance) and I had not yet had a chance to think about designing my own, I scanned their collection and thought, This is perfect. Yes.

Pinhole Press offers a collection of simple and elegant holiday cards -- which I'm now simply dubbing anytime cards. The collection is happily not overwhelming (I like options, but 30 pages of options freaks me out) and you can quickly filter designs depending on photo size (I knew I wanted 4+), photo style (I didn't have a preference), and card type (I knew I wanted flat). Since I also knew I wanted to include a holiday update, it was easy to narrow down my choice to the pretty blue letter collage design.

I spent about 15 minutes spinning through my 2012 photos to select candidates and another 15 minutes drafting the copy. I then loaded the images onto Pinhole Press (the interface will save your images across projects and you can save projects and come back to them later) and started fooling around with the options. The live interface was super easy to use and within minutes, my card was done and ordered. Totally awesome.

And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I actually gasped when the cards arrived (notable because I'm a designer and I am picky). The card stock is sturdy and the image quality super vibrant; the quality of the envelopes is great too (no flimsy see-through envelopes here). Jon and Laurel -- and even little Violet...who kept pointing and naming us all in the photos -- also were impressed and Laurel was so excited about the cards that she helped stamp and stuff all of them and even hand wrote some of the return addresses for me. Also totally awesome.

So, in a nutshell, I'm a huge fan of Pinhole Press and highly recommend them if you're looking for simple and elegant anytime cards. If you love sending cards and didn't get around to producing them last month, you can do them now. Because reconnecting via personal mail is awesome any time of the year.