My name is Jena, and I've been nick-named the Vista Print Goddess.
Feel free to email me through the contact form on the home page.
Here are some general tips and tricks to getting the most, for the least.
♦ I suggest you always use the advanced editing function. Even if VP offers a style of something that I love, I still want to go in and "test it out." I want to move things around, change the font, change the size, change the colour. I'm a micro-manager like that.
I actually found our "wedding font" by doing the advanced editing. I stumbled across their "Kon Tiki Enchanted" font, and completely fell in love with it. I used it in almost all text, including the invites (not VP, I didn't come across VP until after I had already purchased this paper). |
The Kon Tiki Enchanted font was also used on the tote bags, the banners, the address labels, the cards.... see what I mean? All because I hit that little "Advanced editing" link.
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♦ If you wait for uploads to be free, you can personalize anything (advanced editing is almost always free, with a very few exceptions), and once you've paid for an item with the image you upload, you can keep using it without paying the upload fee again.
Looking just at the games sheets I made (folded brochures), $40 for the 25 brochures, plus four separate photos/images, at $4.99 each... ouch! But, with the magic that is their emails, they were free. |
♦ I've learned a lot about shipping as well, through trial and error. If you play with the number/types of things in your cart, it adjusts shipping cost.
Here's an example: Our order includes: business cards, flat note cards, and the photo envelope seals. Slow shipping for this order would be $6.25. Now add a pen, shipping is now $6.15! Seriously, you're going to pay me ten cents and give me a free pen that I designed? Awesome. I've had a couple of large-ish orders recently that when I added a free pen, it lowered my shipping by as much as $0.60. Free money and a free pen. I'll take it. |
♦ Do you need more than what's offered for free? Say you need 4 matching ladies' tshirts (bachelorette party?!). If you've got a good email, one shirt will be 80% off = $2.66. But you want 4 shirts. To add 3 more shirts, your total jumps to $44.63, booooo. If you add slow shipping in, these 4 shirts are going to cost you $12.57 each. However, let's, instead, place four separate orders, all within the same hour (or the same night, same weekend, etc). Slow shipping for the 1 shirt is $4.41, making each shirt $7.07. I <3 saving money on something I would have purchased anyway!
♦ Want to make the 4 separate orders even cooler? Place 3 of the orders, paying for the slow shipping. The 4th order, pay for the 7 day shipping. It's cheaper for VP to print the other 3 early and ship them all in one box. So you pay for slow shipping for most, and get them all in 7 days :)
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♦What's the difference between 1, 2, 3, and 4? Not much, right? I ordered the free 10 flat cards, but I needed 40. And I wanted them *fast* so I could get them out in the mail (which, uh oh, I still haven't, oops). I found out, when ordering the Rehearsal Dinner invites, that different categories of cards count as completely different items, which means they're each free, and can ship under one fee.
1. Wedding Enclosure Cards, 2. Wedding Save the Date Cards, 3. Wedding RSVP Cards, 4. Wedding Announcements. They're all the same (design and size), but they're all different items. Sweet. The matching envelopes were included in two of them, and I had an offer for the other two sets (20 more envelopes for $8).