Business Card Help Request and a Give-Away!

Before my jewelry blog seems to turn into a weather site, I thought I had better post a new entry on the topic of JEWELRY.   The topic on my mind today though has more to do with the jewelry business.... which counts too, I think!     

It's really more of a question than an answer, so as you might guess, I'm hoping you will share some suggestions with me again!  

Like most of you, I like to have BUSINESS CARDS on hand to send out with orders, give to people I talk to about my business face-to-face, etc.  I've tried a variety of designs and ways of creating them.    

Typically I've had designs that matched my logo (2011) or banner (2012).  This year (2013), I just been experimenting with designs on my blog and cards so nothing quite matches  and they change every now and then, but I'm getting a feel for what I like.   Anyway, ....

MY BIG PLAN for later this year is to do some rebranding of my business and at that time, I would come up with a new logo, banners, and business cards that coordinate and I plan to have the cards professionally printed.   Until then, I'd rather not end up with hundreds of cards with a temporary design.   

Sounds easy, right?   Here are a couple of things complicating  my situation:

1) I've had several designs in the past but all on a computer that crashed.   

2) I've tried using Word templates, Avery templates, and others, but they are either so limited they won't do what I want, I can't figure out how to make them do what I want, or I can't find them to reuse a second time if I do like them. 

3) I used to have a nice, inexpensive, easy-to-use, flexible CD-ROM product I bought at an office store for $9.99 that worked like a dream.   I would love to have something similar  for $10-25 dollars, and was looking online last night, but none seem to work on the Windows 8 platform yet.  (Maybe you know, if they were made for Windows Vista or XP, will they run on Windows 8?   If not, have you heard of any that will work on Windows 8?)   

4) I looked through a lot of pages of supposedly "free templates," "free software," and "free downloads" online last night, but they were free to use the templates then you ordered your cards to be printed through a company.   Again, not what I want for now, but will later.

SO, I'm wondering .....

A)  Do you have any SUGGESTIONS in terms of getting cards made quick and easy and inexpensively?

and

B)  There are so many services I see for making cards professionally later when I am ready.   Which have you tried and liked or disliked?  And why?   (Some I've seen are:  Vistaprint.com, moo.com, zazzle.com, freelogoservices.com; although the last one may be more for designing business logos than cards.)   

Also, I think that Etsy sometimes offers special deals on business cards.   I'm not currently selling on Etsy, only Artfire.  I haven't heard they offer any special rates on cards.  If you know otherwise, would love to hear that too!  

Thanks to you all for your helpful input!   Seems like a little thing but I've spent hours on this lately and made very little progress.  

  I would love to tackle this problem in the next couple of days if at all possible, perhaps a week is more realistic.

As a small token of my thanks for your help, make a helpful suggestion and I'll put your name into a drawing to win a small give-away bag of destash beads and an assortment of my metal components!  

Please leave me a way to contact you. If you don't want your info posted, please say so or send a separate message with  your contact info. 

So many thanks!

~Sharyl

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Graphics:

snow symbol for weather chart:  http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/icons/status/weather_snow.jpg

question mark person:  http://www.wpclipart.com/blanks/callouts/eyeball_character/bubble_eyeball_character_question.jpg

CD-ROM:  http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/disks/cdrom_bold.jpg

computer with vacuum tubes:  http://www.wpclipart.com/computer/PCs/eniac_vacuum_tubes.jpg

pouch:  http://www.wpclipart.com/clothes/accessories/leather_pouch.jpg

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