Kinkos/officemax/staples DIY printing

emanos

I am thinking about having my invitation person make a design for my menu/programs then printing it myself.  I feel like it will be a lot cheaper.  Does anyone know if Kinkos/officemax/staples will print on paper you bring in...and make sure the pdf fits to the paper you are printing on?

Any experience....how costly are these places?

gcbuckeye2

I am not sure about these places, but I just printed my things at home on my home printer, and they turned out great! You can change the size of paper you are printing on even from your home computer on Microsoft Word, and it is really easy. This was definitely cheaper than having them printed somewhere else, so maybe it will work for you!

[Deleted User]

I used to work at FedEx Office. They will use paper you provide, however, the paper must be laser safe (it should say that on the front of the package) as their machines are all laser vs. ink jet machines. And it must be no smaller than standard 8 1/2 x 11 or they cannot put it through the machines.

For our invites, we bought one of those DIY kits and printed them at home. We also printed our programs ourselves and took them to FedEx for folding and stapling. HTH.

MissOwl

i have had great experiences printing pdfs at our local staples. they should/will print on your paper and will show you a proof before they print them all. i think your other question is about whether they print 'full bleed' which means all the way to the edges. the advantage of staples/officemax/fedex kinkos is that they DO print full bleed and not all home computers do. just make sure you ask for it or double-check the proof to make sure your edges are printing right.
if you have extra cash, they can do edge trimming and folding and stuff for you. that is pretty easy to DIY but just thought i'd throw it out there.

BCsGal

We had our programs printed at Office Max, and they turned out great! It cost less than an ink cartridge, which I most surely would have had to buy had I printed at home, and they looked better too, since it was printed on laser, as opposed to ink-jet.  It also took like less than 5 minutes to print 100, waaaaay less time than doing it on my home computer.  I would definitely recommend!  Office Max let me provide my own paper, but that paper had previously been purchased at Office Max, so you might want to verify.

csh96

I recently called Staples about printing on cardstock and they were asking for $.98 per page.  More than I expected!