this post contains an advertorial for which I received compensation!
Let's not lie to ourselves - we are all familiar with the faff of sending cards, invitations and flyers out. How many times has your Facebook buzzed to remind you it's your best friend's birthday that weekend and - shit I'm a bad friend, I haven't got a card or stamps or anything. How many times has it been a hashtag on Twitter that's reminded you it's Mother's Day?
Obviously most of you aren't quite as bad a friend or daughter as I am, but I put it more down to disorganisation than anything else! But luckily, my friends and family have realised this after eighteen years - but fear no more.
When Paperless Posthttps://www.paperlesspost.com got in touch with me to find out if I'd be interested in reviewing their service in exchange for some free cards and invitations, I was at first a bit dubious because I didn't really understand the concept. A card...but online? Of course, we all remember the days of e-cards, and essentially that's what Paperless Post does, but in a much fancier way.
They specialise in cards for all sorts of occasions, such as birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, cards especially for your sisters and brothers and aunties and uncles, cards for every birthday. They do wedding invitations, business launch invites, save the dates, kids party invites. Basically, if there's a special occasion for someone in your life or you have an event to throw - this is where Paperless Post are needed. They've also worked with a range of designers and stationery companies to make sure there's a huge variety of designs available on their service, such as Rifle Paper Co., kate spade new york and Oscar De La Renta.
And it's actually a really easy service to use. Here I am demonstrating by sending (yes, you guessed it) a belated birthday card (YES THEY DO THOSE) to my best friend Vicky. I did actually remember her birthday, for those who are about to attack me for forgetting - I just never got round to sending her a card, so here you go, fave eggy pal.
The belated card I chose was this super cool Great Gatsby but DICTIONARY themed card, because come on, I'm an English student...dictionaries and literature in one card? Yes.
From there, it's super easy to customise your card - you can even add a cool background and I went for silver sparkly things. V pretty.
(This is the moment where I realised photographing a laptop screen is actually really hard so simply reverted to screenshots...you'd have thought I'd have worked that out by now but no)
This is the message I sent her...as you can see, very mature and grown up and I'm sure she will appreciate my heartfelt apologies. No, come on, we all know I'm a tit.
But what's a picture of an envelope doing here?! YES THAT'S RIGHT you can even customise the envelope it comes in. You can choose the colour, the liner, and on the front you can even choose a cute little stamp and postmark. When it says paperless post, it really does mean paperless post.
From there, it's really easy just to type in the email address(es) of the person (or people) who you want to send your card(s) to. Then, you press send and voila, it's sent! That's how instant and direct a service it is, and honestly, it's so much less faff. They even have this handy feature...
...which is an address book stored on your account so anyone you send a card to gets stored in there, making it really easy to send cards to them again.
So here's the age old question...do I think this will catch on and is it worth it?
Well, from a point of view from an extremely disorganised person who often needs to be able to do things like this at the touch of a keyboard and the click of a mouse, it's super helpful and I'd definitely use it again. But, the sentimental, Countdown-watching, tea-loving twenty something grandma inside me really loves the thrill of sending and receiving actual paper cards in the post. I love being able to do my pretty calligraphy in cards and write huge long essays about how much I adore the recipient (usually to make up for the fact it's a week late) and see the excitement and have the hugs upon opening (you see, win win). Plus, while Paperless Post does have some free options, the card I sent to Vicky cost 5 'coins' (the PP currency which I did find out is non-refundable so I'm not sure how I feel about that) and you can buy 20 coins for £5, I can imagine it would rack up quite a bill if you were sending them out to lots of people.
So overall, I'm not sure so far about Paperless Post, but I think the principal and the idea behind it is a really cool one and who knows, this is the digital age and the digital generation. We do everything else on our phones, tablets and laptops, so who's to say it won't become a wildly popular thing in the next five years or so? Certainly not me!
What do you guys think to services like Paperless Post? Do you think they'll catch on or do you think we'll always go for good old lick-and-stick envelopes and handwritten cards?
Em xx
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