Wholesale greeting card paper for inkjet

[Tomek Kleczek]

Hi! I will soon get a canon pixma pro 100, and in addition to selling prints, I would like to sell greeting cards. I know this printer is not really meant for printing at the speed needed for greeting cards, but I am not planning on selling large amounts of cards. I know that some good paper for cards comes from red river paper, but I am looking for something cheaper. I can cut the cards myself, and have found many places that sell large sheets in bulk quantities (an a7 greeting card would cost only about 8 cents, compared to the 30+ cents at red river), but they all are for either laser printers, digital press, or offset printing. I am looking mainly for single sided glossy paper. Any suggestions would be helpful!

-Tomek

 

[Roy Sletcher]

Hi! I will soon get a canon pixma pro 100, and in addition to selling prints, I would like to sell greeting cards. I know this printer is not really meant for printing at the speed needed for greeting cards, but I am not planning on selling large amounts of cards. I know that some good paper for cards comes from red river paper, but I am looking for something cheaper. I can cut the cards myself, and have found many places that sell large sheets in bulk quantities (an a7 greeting card would cost only about 8 cents, compared to the 30+ cents at red river), but they all are for either laser printers, digital press, or offset printing. I am looking mainly for single sided glossy paper. Any suggestions would be helpful!

-Tomek

My guess is that unless you are looking at a large volume you are stuck with the retail price of inkjet paper.

Purchasing large sheets and cutting to size may allow you to get down to 15 or so cents per sheet. Still double your target price.

For anything cheaper you probably need to go to a paper merchant and deal in several hundred pounds (weight) per order.

Good luck in your search. The term "rock and a hard place" comes to mind.

-Roy Sletcher-

 

[mike earussi]

Paper that has an inkjet coating applied will always be more expensive than an uncoated paper. But if you don't mind the drawbacks of printing on an uncoated paper that's fine. The inkjet coating keeps the ink dots from spreading so the image is sharper, and from sinking down into the paper which would make the colors look dull. But if you're wanting a softer pastel look then uncoated paper will save you a lot of money. But you will have to make your own ICC paper profile as no canned profiles exist for uncoated papers (that I know of).

 

[Tomek Kleczek]

I have looked into uncoated paper, and when purchased in bulk can cost as little as 6 cents per each a7 card. My question now is what would be the cheapest coated paper, preferably one sided gloss, bought in bulk. Thank you for your answers!

-Tomek

 

[DotCom Editor]

Red River's card products are scored for folding and yield a professional finished appearance. Trying to fold unscored card stock accurately yourself is not likely to be pretty. Plus, you're going to have to invest considerable time to get it all right. I'd much rather spend a little more and go for professional-looking results. Good luck!

 

[mike earussi]

Red River's card products are scored for folding and yield a professional finished appearance. Trying to fold unscored card stock accurately yourself is not likely to be pretty. Plus, you're going to have to invest considerable time to get it all right. I'd much rather spend a little more and go for professional-looking results. Good luck!

Actually it's quite easy if you have the right tools. I use the Fiskars 12 cutter with scoring blade and it works fine:

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[Tomek Kleczek]

What paper do you use?

 

[mike earussi]

What paper do you use?

I've tried a lot of papers and finally settled on Innova Art's IFA-45, a 100% cotton non OBA natural white paper that has a slightly textured surface (which prevents fingerprints from showing) and has an excellent dmax and color saturation. I prefer the softer slightly beige natural white because it's makes for an "easier on the eye" writing surface than stark white does.

It's not cheap though at $1.20/sheet:

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so if you're looking to save money this is not it. It's for when you're wanting to sell the best and/or trying to impress someone.

 

[Tomek Kleczek]

Do you have any suggestions for cheap(er) paper?

 

[mike earussi]

Do you have any suggestions for cheap(er) paper?

None that I like. There are other alternatives to the IFA-45 from Canson, Hahnemuhle, Epson etc. but as they're all within a few pennies in cost from each other I just choose the one I preferred.

But for economical it really depends on your standards and how fussy you and your customers are.

When I first started making cards I just used the cheapest thing I could find, which was standard RC luster. But I soon grew to dislike it because not only was it too thin and warped easily but you also couldn't write on the inside with a pencil because it's plastic coated.

There are plenty of matte papers that don't have this problem, but matte papers are too dull for my photos, though if I were printing reproductions of watercolor paintings matte would have been fine. Red River is usually the best for the price but I don't personally care for any of them because they're always second best (i.e. they're almost, but not quite as good as Canson, Hahnemuhle, ..., etc). I even tried RR's highest quality and most expensive high gloss card stock, but the paper they use is so cheap that it absorbed so much moisture from my room that they warped in a few months. The old saying about getting what you pay for really holds true in inkjet paper.

You just need to first define how low of a standard you have, or think you can get away with, and then go from there.

But if I were wanting to keep my costs down to almost nothing, as you've proposed, your original idea of using uncoated stock is still the best. Just do a test print on as many as you can find and see which looks the best (or looks the least worse).