Free Download: Card Templates

Have you ever envisioned the perfect greeting card, with the correct balance of playful irony, heartwarming cuteness and personal touch that will make your loved ones astonished, mesmerized, perplexed and borderline perish (from an overdose of clever cuteness) with your witty and affectionate writing and design?

With Lauren Radley’s free templates, you can materialize your twistedly cute wishes this holidays, or valentines, or invented festivity of your choosing!

Meet Lauren

Lauren Radley ( @lauren_radley ), aside from creating the templates that you can download below, is a freelance illustrator who runs her own business creating fun and whimsical prints. Her shop and brand was born five years ago when she began creating playful maps of places and cities she knew and loved.

Soon the range of designs and products grew. She hopes to spread a little bit of love and magic into the lives of people of all ages. That is a good motto for your card designs, unless you’d like to greet them with pain and despair instead... That's your choice ultimately!

A Lot of Possibly Unnecessary History

The custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls. Maybe on the next article we will share a papyrus scroll greeting card template for the purists out there...!

By the early 15th century, handmade paper greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. The Germans are known to have printed New Year's greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400, and handmade paper Valentines were being exchanged in various parts of Europe at the same time too.

Leaping forwards to the 2000s, greeting cards sadly saw their impending downfall...! Until 23 years later, when a paradigm shifting article was posted to Domestika's blog, that suddenly revived and expanded the art form by giving a free download of a template made by the now world-famous artist Lauren Radley! As of today (in 2060), her original free templates sell for 2 CryptoCards which are valued at 1 Million of the old 2023 Dollars. Problem is that with inflation that can only buy you a peanut, nowadays... Anyways, who knows what the future has in store for your greeting cards?

Printing

Back to reality, here are some tips to help you materialize your greeting cards:

Selling on an ecommerce platform like Etsy or Not on The High Street is a good starting point since that they’ll take care of the printing for you.

But if you want to become a greeting card pro you can print them yourself too! You'll need a printer capable of handling cardstock. It's an easy material to find, on the internet or at your local stationer’s shop.

If you need any help coming up with designs, Lauren Radley’s course on greeting cards' illustrations and business will come in handy.

Get your loved ones the custom greeting cards they deserve!

And finally if you'd like to improve your technical skills before tackling these templates, you can also check out the varied illustration courses that Domestika has to offer.