Events and gifting
Printable Greeting Cards
Make a card from one sheet of A4. It folds once down the middle to an A5 card that fits a C5 envelope, with an outline picture on the front for someone to colour in, and the inside left blank to write on.
Four steps
How to make a printable greeting card
- 1
Pick the occasion
This sets the greeting and a matching picture, both of which you can change.
- 2
Write the greeting
A greeting and a second line, both editable.
- 3
Print on card
160 to 250 gsm, landscape, at 100% scale.
- 4
Score and fold
Score down the dashed centre line, then fold with the printing outside.
- 5
Colour it in
The front picture is an outline, so it can be coloured before giving.
One sheet, one fold
The card is deliberately the simplest construction that works: a single landscape sheet with a fold down the centre. Nothing is glued, nothing has to line up with anything on the other side, and there is no second sheet to keep track of. The right half is the front, the left half is the back, and both inside faces are blank.
| Print on | Folds to | Envelope |
|---|---|---|
| A4 landscape | A5, 148 x 210 mm | C5 |
| A5 landscape | A6, 105 x 148 mm | C6 |
| Letter landscape | Half letter | A6 (US) |
About printing the inside
The inside message is a second page, to be printed on the reverse of the same sheet. This is the one part that is genuinely awkward, and not because of the template: printers disagree about which edge they turn the paper on, so the same file comes out the right way up on one machine and upside down on the next.
Rather than guess, print one card and look at it. If the message is inverted, turn on the rotate switch and print again. Most people skip the printed message entirely and write inside by hand, which is usually what the recipient would rather have anyway.
Getting a clean fold
- Score first. Run the back of a knife or a bone folder down the dashed line against a ruler. Card above about 160 gsm cracks along the fold if it is not scored, and the crack shows white.
- Fold with the print outwards. The front cover is on the right half.
- 160 to 250 gsm. Lighter will not stand up on a mantelpiece; heavier will not feed through most home printers.
- Print at 100%. Scaling moves the fold line away from the centre, and a card that is not folded exactly in half is immediately obvious.
Related printables
Place cards, menus and gift tags cover the rest of an event, colouring pages hold the same original artwork at full page size, and bottle labels finish off a bottle given as a present.
Answers