To make our photo announcements, invitations and cards, we take your photo print or digital photo, crop and retouch it, and print it with your choice of copy. Our talented artists will adjust and resize the image to produce your cards, removing flaws, lightening and adjusting colors and values in the process. Some of our cards are only printed in black and white, but we can convert your color photo to make these cards.

We know you are in a hurry, and we do our best to provide custom art in a reasonable time. Orders are normally shipped out within 2-3 business days of receipt (not including weekends or holidays). Holiday Card orders take several days longer, due to increased volume. This turnaround time does not include shipping time to us or back to you. Keep in mind that the U.S. mail can take two days or ten days! If you wish to get your order very quickly, don't use U.S. mail. Express shipping options are available to speed your order to you, but do not shorten the 3 business-day turnaround time in our office. (We are closed weekends and major holidays to be with our families, and our express deliveries do not include weekends or major holidays either.)

Yes. We ship to many locations outside of the USA, including Canada, most of Europe, and many other selected locations. Check our shipping rates page in our information section for countries and estimated rates. You will need to select the option Ground shipping for international addresses, which will be sent via International Priority or Economy, which normally takes 3-5 days for delivery to your country.

We will contact you via email if we cannot ship to you and need to cancel your order. Please note that the shipping rate you are given is an estimate. Due to high shipping costs for large packages, and damage issues, we do not offer frames, albums or gifts to ship to international addresses. Duties, taxes and customs fees are your responsibility.

Yes. We can print foreign languages provided they use Roman characters (the same characters as English). You must provide your wording typewritten if it is not in English. There is no additional charge for this service. If you wish to have two versions of your announcement, i.e., English and French, there is a $5.00 set-up charge for the type change. (The total quantity ordered may be divided in any amount between the versions, i.e., 62 English and 38 French for a total of 100 ordered.) If you wish to print two versions, please call to add this fee to your order. In addition, we recommend a proof of the non-English version. The proof charge is $5.00. You may indicate a second version of your wording in the "My Custom Wording" box while ordering online.

You can reorder for one month after you receive your order. A reorder form will be sent to you with your order.

Our announcements are easily adapted to multiples. Twins can be accommodated by using one photo of both twins on most designs, or our Original Twins Cameo design for one photo of each. Triplets, or more, can be similarly accommodated by any of our versions, depending upon the photo, and are a natural fit for our Expressions design. To keep the focus on the photo, some parents of multiples prefer to omit information about length, birth time and possibly even weight. Please contact us if you have any questions!

To order, send us your order details, photo, and payment using our web site or catalog order form. You can start the online order process by looking through our online product catalog and clicking "add to cart" on the item you wish to order. Once you complete the order details online, you can submit online, or print and mail. You can mail or email photos to go with your order. If you have any problem, please call! (1-800-421-9521 Monday thru Friday 9-5 EST) We will be more than happy to help!

Yes. Use our preorder form on our printed or PDF order form, or preorder online. Your preorder needs to be received at least a day before your card order.

Envelopes are different for different designs, so you must choose your announcement design and color in advance to preorder envelopes. You must order the same quantity or less envelopes than you will order cards. We include one extra envelope per 25. (You can increase your quantity and get the remaining envelopes when ordering if you guess low.) At the time of your envelope preorder, you will need to pay for shipping charges, a $10 deposit towards your order, and return address envelope imprinting if desired.

If you want to preorder envelopes online, go to the product page displaying the card design you will be ordering and click on the "Preorder Envelopes" button on the left side. The site will lead you through the preorder process to get envelopes for that design using your credit card.

Here is some information about envelopes to help you place your order:
Original designs: These designs use envelopes that match the card color. If preordering for this design, you must choose your card color of pink, blue or ivory in advance. Many customers order ivory envelopes and announcements and then use the pink or blue ribbon. This allows them a colorful accent, plus the ability to have their envelopes ready to go. We do not recommend using ivory envelopes with a pink or blue announcement.

Lullaby Collection: All three Lullaby Designs (pink floral, blue stripe and alphabet) use the same ivory envelope. It is the same as the original design ivory envelope, and the daydream design envelope.

Laurel, Fanfare, Jubilee and Jack & Jill designs: These four designs use a common white envelope.

Morning Star: These designs use envelopes that match the card color. If preordering for this design, you must choose your card color of pale sage, powder blue, pink or yellow in advance.

Nursery Designs: These cards use a white envelope (smaller than the Laurel and Fanfare envelope). You can preorder these and choose your Nursery folder design later: bear, bunny, chick or dots.

You may order a proof of your card via fax or email for a $5 charge per proof. We recommend proofs for orders shipped to international addresses and for cards printed in foreign languages. Since there is time lost in the proof process, it usually adds about a day to your order turnaround time.

Photos are handled with personal care from a digital artist. Since most of our work is done by the time you see the proof, we cannot change which photo we are using at the proof stage. If you wish to start with a new photo, you will need to pay a $30 photo set-up charge at that time. If you cancel your order AFTER your photo is worked up, you will be charged a non-refundable $30 photo set-up fee that is included in photo card orders.

How can you avoid all this and still get the results you want??? Many customers are concerned that the photo they are sending will not work well. If you are concerned, put a note in with your order asking us to give you a call before proceeding. One of our artists will call and review your photos with you, choosing the one for optimum results. Please do not send photos that you do not like, or that are not a good resemblence for how you see your child. We will proofread your order carefully against what you send us. We have an extremely high satisfaction rate and think you will be pleased with our careful retouching and correcting of your photo! If we do make an error on your order, we will gladly make it right and send replacement materials by express mail.

Sharp focus is most important. With babies, this requires a zoom lens. If your camera doesn't have a zoom lens, move farther away to get better focus. Use 100 or 200 speed film. We prefer to work from glossy color prints. We can also work from black and white prints. We cannot work from negatives or Polaroids. See our photo tips page for more information.

We find Bellevue and Medici Script to work well on almost all cards because they are very readable and lend a decorative element. For an announcement with minimal wording, any typestyle will work. However, for cards with lots of text avoid our fancier scripts.

We take pride in carefully retouching, proofreading, and printing each order. We want you to be delighted to mail out your cards! If any problems should arise, we will work to correct them.

CORRECTIONS

-- If we make a mistake on your order from the information you provided, we will correct the problem and express the corrected materials to you as soon as possible.
-- If you provided us with incorrect information, unclear information, or you are not happy with the photo you sent us, we will be happy to work with you to correct the problem using reorder pricing or less, depending upon the materials that need to be replaced.

RETURNS

-- If you are unhappy with your order, you may return it in its entirety, in original condition, for a refund within one month of purchase. However, two charges are not refundable. (1) You will not be refunded for a $30 setup charge (which was incorporated in all card prices). (2) You will not be refunded for shipping charges.

CANCELLATIONS

-- If you cancel your order before it ships, you will incur a $30 non-refundable setup charge if your order has already been worked on by an artist.

The keepsake you are mailing is timeless, and will be saved by many. So, although in a perfect world it is ideal to send announcements out during baby's first month, sometimes life with a newborn delays things a bit. We recommend that you send announcements out even if baby is over a month old, and that you wait to order them until you have a photo you feel does your baby justice. Your friends and family will remember the quality of the card and message of pure joy, not the date your announcement arrived in the mail. On average, it takes most parents about a month after baby's arrival to send their order to us, but we frequently make announcements for babies weeks older. Occasionally we even do an announcement for a baby who is more than three months old. At any age, good news is nice to receive.

Actually, photos taken the first week are not usually the best photos of the baby. We recommend waiting a few days at least to get the best photos, and that you consider all the photos you have of the first few weeks to choose the one that you think looks most like the baby you know and love. Be sure to read our photo tips to get the best photo (linked under "information").

We will be happy to accept your correction or change up until the point your order is printed. Please call and email as soon as you realize you have a change, and we will check the status of your order. Once your order is printed, we will be happy to work with you to reprint the needed changes with minimal charges to cover replacement materials and shipping.

Four common errors and their solutions follow. If your ordering problem is not solved with these answers, you can call us for help (800-421-9521) or send your order details by mail, fax or email. (Don't forget to tell us your shipping method choice, address and payment information along with your card details.)

1.) Error message: “Subtotal* cannot be blank" (*paper products, ribbon color, etc.)
-- This error will appear at checkout when your computer has placed an item with a price of $0 in your shopping cart.Sometimes this occurs when you used the "back" button while adding items to your cart.
-- To fix this, click on “Shopping Cart” at the top of your screen. (Do not click on retrieve my cart.) You will see the entire contents of your shopping cart.
-- Click on the “Remove” button at the top of each item with a cost of $0 to delete the item. Your shopping cart should contain only items which show a price.
-- Now you may click on the check out button at the bottom of the shopping cart page. You may have to fill in your shipping information again (some browsers save this information for you).

2). The “Process my order online” button does not appear on the order summary page. You can correct this, or simply fax the order summary to 419-662-9540.
-- To correct the problem and place your order online, check to see if you have selected the option “I want to print my order . . . " just above the credit card information. (From the order summary page, click on your browser’s back button to go back to the page where you entered your credit card information.)
-- Click on the check box for "I want to print my order..." (it will have a check mark in it) to toggle the switch off. Then click the "proceed to order summary" button. Now the “Process online” button should appear on the next screen.
-- If the box is not checked but you still didn’t get the “Process my order online” button on the order summary page, click on the box twice to toggle it on and off again. This clears the memory on the switch and you should now get the “Process my order online” button to appear.

3.) Your session has timed out.
-- This error will appear when your server or ours is experiencing heavy traffic. This error is very rare and you should be able to complete your order by trying again. If you experience this error more than once, you may need to place your order via regular mail, fax or e-mail as your server or browser may be having difficulty communicating with our website.

4.) Microsoft VBScript Runtime error . . .
-- This error will appear when your server or browser is incompatible with our website. Our website preforms best with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. You will need to place your order via regular mail, fax or e-mail.

We prefer to start from a glossy color print, even for our black and white announcements. We can also work from your black and white print for our black and white cards. For best results, be sure to read our photo tips before choosing your announcement photo.

Yes. They will be returned.