One of my favorite traditions is sending and receiving holiday cards. I managed to be on top of things this year since I hired a photographer to take family photos in the fall. Since I love reviewing all of the various card companies I end up ordering a few from here and there, so just like last year, friends & family you may receive a different card design from one another 🙂
I just received my TinyPrints cards that I ordered for review and unfortunately they are a bit disappointing. I’m so bummed! I’ll be contacting customer service to see if they can resolve my problem, but in the meantime please enjoy my review!
Tiny Prints Now At the Shutterfly Site
Tiny Prints and Shutterfly are both owned by the same company, but Tiny Prints is the higher end offering from the company. Looks like they’ve changed up their product line and they are no longer offering Letterpress or Custom Foil options. They were gorgeous and so unique but very expensive. They are still offering Foil and Glitter options though, which I am happy about! They have finally merged sites so you can now find TinyPrints cards on the Shutterfly site and your order confirmations are sent by Shutterfly. However, even though they have merged, promotions are computed separately. For instance, Shutterfly has a free shipping offer right now for Shutterfly orders of $49+ but TinyPrints is offering free shipping for TinyPrints orders of $10+.
Designs
I ordered a Foil card and a standard card to review this year. Cards must be ordered in multiples of 5, with 10 being the minimum order. I wish they allowed any quantity to be specified. On the other hand, there are tons of different trim options and paper options, and you can even choose square or rectangular shaped for almost every design. I love that you can really customize the card to your preferences!
It is so easy to pick a card via the card visualizer. I love that I can see what designs work best with my image at a glance. Then it’s super easy to drag and drop my image onto the card and customize the text.
Quality
I’ve always been pretty happy with Tiny Prints quality, but this year the Foil Option I ordered did not meet my expectations. The design I chose was called Gentle Branches by Petite Alma. This card has some foil accents around the border in the nature illustrations and the Merry Christmas in the center of the card is also foil stamped.
Unfortunately, of the 10 cards that came, all of them suffered from missing foil “ink”. As you can see in the photos, the Merry Christmas lettering is not filled in. In addition, there are foil dots around the frame which suffer from the same problem. The dots aren’t as big of a deal because they just look like little bubbles, but the unevenness of the Merry Christmas does not look good to me. The design isn’t supposed to look distressed!
In addition, the top card in my pack of 10 has a diagonal line near the top it like it was scored with a machine. I can’t tell if it was printed that way or if it is a physical mark. Either way it’s only the top card so it was not part of my image and shouldn’t be there.
The paper quality is nice and thick. I’m happy with the color rendition as well, though I’ll have to compare it to the other cards I ordered to truly tell if the color fidelity is true.
I’m going to contact TinyPrints to see if they can reprint these for me because the foil quality is really unsatisfactory. I’ll update the review when I get a response.
Shipping
This year, shipping was incredibly fast though it could be because I ordered early. I made my order late night on Sunday, November 12, I got notified that they were in production and shipped out on Monday, November 13, and I can see from the tracking information that the cards were tendered to UPS on Tuesday, November 14 and delivered to my mailbox via USPS on Friday, November 17. I was happy with the turnaround time this year, as sometimes the Mail Innovations (UPS + USPS partnership) can be really slow.
Overall
Pros: Lots of gorgeous designs, particularly in the premium options. Tons of options for trim and paper. The paper quality is beautiful!
Cons: Tiny Prints imprints their mark on the back of the card. Shipping starts at $4.95 for standard cards, but shipping for premium cards is $8.95. The foil did not turn out right with my cards. Let’s see if this is a one time problem and if their customer service can fix this.
Quality: The paper quality is great. The cardstock is nice and has a slight texture and sheen. As stated above, the foil has issues but let’s see if that is just a one time problem.