November 10, 2012
QSL Card Experiment
A nifty orange envelope arrived in the mail today. In it were two photo print packages, each containing 50 4 inch by 6 inch prints bearing my callsign, portrait, address, and boxes to enter QSO information in.
This is the first set of QSL cards I have had printed in many years. Since I have moved several times and also changed callsigns I figured now was a good time to get some new ones made.
Looking at some of the available options from the online card printers didn't really impress me much. Many of them have all the same canned design in one form or another. None that I saw would take a design that you upload and print it for you. Even better would be a way to design your own card right on the page.
I opted to try printing my own. I spend some time designing a card in Inkscape. I played with a few different designs until I was satisfied with what I had. Then came the job of finding a printer. There are local printers that will do the job, but for this first run I thought that a photo printing option would work well enough. Serendipitously, Shutterfly had a special going on that go me 100 free prints for only the cost of shipping. (a USD 15.00) value.
And now, they're here. Although they're too flimsy to send as a postcard and the graphics are cut quite close to the edge of the paper I think I got a pretty good deal for my money. After these 100 cards are gone I'll investigate an actual glossy postcard printing option instead of photo prints.
