Paper greeting cards might be giving up ground to cyber alternatives such as e-cards or online event invitations, but veteran Spokane graphic designer Rene Bross has come up with what she believes is an effective way to combat that trend.

Bross is the owner and sole employee of My Good Greetings, an online customizable invitation and card business that she founded about two years ago based on her belief that life's big celebrations deserve to be printed on paper to make a lasting impression.

Customers order cards that Bross has designed from her Web site, at www.mygoodgreetings.com, and she then has them printed here and ships them.

Environmentally conscious in her own life, Bross also has incorporated her desire to be a good steward of the Earth into her business, by only printing her cards on 100 percent recycled paper and using biodegradable ink. Envelopes and address labels are also made of the same recycled paper, she says.

Bross contends that her business, which she runs out of her North Spokane home office, fills a niche that's mostly non-existent in the increasingly popular, online customizable card and invitation industry by providing modern and affordable designs on completely recycled paper.

"My vision was to make it easy and affordable for people to buy quality, beautifully designed, recycled cards and stationery," she says. "We created a website that makes it easy to upload photos, personalize the text, and preview finished products."

Bross contracts with Hayden-based printer Digital Lizard, which uses a digital press to print the cards. That helps reduce paper waste, because the color is almost always accurate, she says, adding that a digital press allows the printer to make as many or few cards as ordered.

With about 20 years of experience as a graphic designer, Bross says she works entirely out of her home office designing the cards, proofing orders submitted online, and then sending those orders on to the printer. She says she also responds daily to customers' questions and has a chat function on the site she uses to communicate directly with customers if they have any questions during the ordering process.

She says she usually creates around 10 new card designs each week, which she uploads immediately to the business's Web site. In all, Bross says there are well over 1,000 unique, customizable designs on the site.

She says she's shipped her cards to every state in the U.S. and most of Canada, but that the bulk of her sales are from the East Coast, as well as California, Florida, and Texas. She adds that she doesn't get a lot of sales from the Spokane area, deriving most of the sales in Washington from the West Side.

Bross says the business has been growing slowly, yet steadily, since it launched in 2008. She hopes to see that growth continue as more people become familiar with her company.

Most of her cards now are flat with no fold, or have a single fold, but she hopes in the future to design higher-end cards with more intricate folds. Also, she says, she'd like to come up with a holiday card into which people can incorporate an annual family letter.

Bross developed the idea for her online custom-card business while she was working as a freelance designer creating customizable card templates for a company that sold such designs through photo kiosks in big-box stores.

"I had always done my own holiday cards, and I try to be green in my personal life, so I was trying to find an alternative of green cards," Bross says. "I didn't find any recycled alternatives, and since I was already designing cards and there weren't any green cards out there, I had some money to invest and started building the company."

My Good Greetings sells customizable cards and party invitations for almost any holiday or special occasion, including births, graduations, bridal and baby showers, and corporate and birthday parties. Bross has designed a variety of thank- you cards to match some of the themes for those occasions, but also offers generic thank-you card designs that can be customized with a person's name or ordered without it.

She says all of the cards are available in minimum orders of 20, which usually cost around $30 and include envelopes.

Discounts are available for orders of more than 100 cards, and Bross says she also offers what she calls the Eco-Saver line of cards, which cost less to print because more cards fit on a single sheet of paper. My Good Greetings first offered that particular line of cards, which are about 9 inches tall by 3 inches wide, this past Christmas, and they proved to be one of the most popular sizes for holiday cards, she says.

In general, holiday cards are the best sellers, Bross says, followed by baby shower invites and birth announcements.

"I have a lot of repeat customers, and hopefully people who buy the shower invites come back for the birth announcements," she says.

The site's most ordered design features a cartoon monkey, which she says is popular for baby showers, birth announcements, and birthday invitations.

Last fall, My Good Greetings started selling wedding invitations, with separately available matching save-the-date cards, RSVP cards, direction cards, thank you cards, and address labels. Wedding invitations are printed on a higher-quality card stock and are the most expensive cards sold by My Good Greetings, Bross says.

When a customer selects a card online, the customization process is simple. After the customer uploads a desired photo or photos to use in a picture card, there are options to crop, zoom in or out, or change the photo from color to sepia or black and white. Any text on the card also is customizable, she says.

In some circumstances, based on customers' special requests, she says she'll also make custom cards that don't appear on the site.

On one occasion, a woman hired Bross to design some note cards that the woman then sold to raise money for an orphanage in Cambodia. Bross says the children at the orphanage drew pictures that were used for the front of the note cards, and on the back, each card featured a color photo of the child who drew the picture along with a personal message from that child.

Bross uses Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator software to design her cards, and says she gets inspiration for new designs from a variety of sources, such as magazines, catalogs, fabrics, or different color combinations she sees.

"Something will catch my eye and I'll just see the card in my head," she says.

Bross says she also strives to keep herself updated on what's popular in the design industry each year, adding that owls were popular in 2010, as were jungle animals for children's designs.

She describes her design style as "a blend between fun, playful, modern, unique, and fresh."

"My favorite part about the business is coming up with the designs of the cards," Bross says. "I still get a kick (out of the fact) that someone would want to purchase something I designed. I also enjoy the fact that it's a happy business for life's happy moments—celebrations, holidays, or the birth of a new baby."