Greeting Card Factory — A Fun Way to Create Cards, Envelopes, Stickers and Gift Tags

By Leanne Tremblay

Great Buy

While most of this site is dedicated to printing photo cards and other gifts using online photo printing services like Shutterfly, there's still a place for home printing.

We found that Greeting Card Factory Deluxe (from the makers of Scrapbook Factory Deluxe), is an affordable greeting card package that's easy to use for kids and parents alike.

Sometimes you just want a one-off...a quick birthday card or gift tag, or some last minute party invitations. For around $50 this software does it all and is geared to printing your projects on the color inkjet you have at home.

My kids especially like using it to make their own cards for their friends. They have a blast picking fonts, crazy images, and wacky messages.

Here's what the software comes with: more than 24,000 card designs and assorted projects, 90,000 graphics, and over 1000 fonts.

Even if you don't need to print cards that much, just the graphics and fonts alone are extras you can re-use in tons of other projects for school or work.

To learn more about all these great features, visit the Greeting Card Factory web page here.

What I Liked

Like the other Art Explosion products, Greeting Card Factory gets you up and running quickly.

Click design a card from a template, or click to design a card from scratch. With over 9000 templates to choose from, you're bound to find a card that's perfect for any occasion.

You can make calendars, poster, stickers, gift tags, the list goes on and on.

Icons on the left let you select backgrounds, text, and draw your own shapes and custom designs.

The gallery pane on the right lets you customize cards with embellishments, ribbon, alphabets, and charms.

Tip for Printing Full Bleed

By default the card designs are built with top, bottom, left and right margins. However if you like the full bleed look (where the picture prints right to the edge of the page) AND you have a printer that supports borderless printing, just go into File, Page Setup, and set your margins to zero. Now when you add a backround, for example, like burlap or linen paper, it will print right the the edge of the page.