Hi Shauna, I am glad you brought this up. I have been dealing with GCU about this just a few days ago.  I ordered like 25 cards from my shop and they all printed beautifully. The quality of the print is excellent.  The colours are beautiful and really like my real life paintings.  The quality of the cards is wonderful too.  Nice thick paper too.    I believe the cards are printed full bleed. I uploaded all excellent quality pics and the exact sizes on the template, etc.  The important elements of my paintings are in the red dotted lines.  This is important because I notice at GCU they print the 5 x7 cards, but what you see is not exactly what you get on screen.  The cards are printed full bleed and some of the sides are cut off during the cutting process.  But for my cards it is not a problem, because the important elements of my paintings are in the red dotted lines.   But for borders, it is a BIG PROBLEM.
 
As the card I had a problem with was one with a border like you are concerned about.  That was  my "Colours of Provence card" and you can see that one at my shop.  It has a blue border around the painting, and the border did not print properly.   The rights side and the bottom of the border were cut off only leaving the border on the top and the left.)   I see your cards Red Hat winter and red hat slippers have nice borders (cute cards btw) and I think you will have a problem with red hat winter - the blue/purple border part of your card if it is not in the dotted line might be cut off like mine was.    If red hat slipper's red line is not in the red border it might also  print like my card did.
 
I thought the cards would print the same as I see on the screen, but that one did not so this was unacceptable for me so I was in contact with GCU and they advised:
 
"Your border will need to fill the entire area outside of our red border in the template, as well as some of the area inside of the red border (see attachment for an example) if it is to always be included in the print.  The area outside of the red border in our template is the bleed edge.  Since the printing process is analog, we can never know for sure where the paper will be cut and end.  Our fulfillment partner indicates that there is a .25 inch machine allowance for cutting, meaning that the cut will fall somewhere within this area. Your image should fill the entire 5x7 inch space but all important elements (copyrights, text, borders, etc.) should be included inside the bleed edge.    
If you would like to resubmit your image, we can assign a few more card credits to your account so that the images can be tested.  I do apologize for the confusion.  If you have any additional questions, please let me know.    
Kind regards,
GCUniverse.com"
 
So I fixed my card and basically in photoshop cropped my image without the border and made the blue border about 1 inch larger and when I overlaid the GC template on top of my revisions, I now had a .25 inch of the blue border safely in the red dotted line - which is what I want and what the painting in real life looks like.  I wish I would have know this before.   So after I fixed my card in question, I ordered another one of my colours of provence and I will see how this works out. I am waiting for my delivery.  If it is not printing correctly now,  I am afraid I will have to remove from my store, because I don’t want the borders to be cut off like this .  Or I will have to remove the border entirely.  And that would be a pity.
 
IMO, I think best to keep everything "important* in the red dotted line.  I am not sure if GGU will print a card with a white border around the image - around that red dotted area.    Perhaps they will and treat it as white space.  I think that would be great too,  because then you can centre your images on the card and if you dont have anything outside that safe area - that would be fine.  I also have an account with cafe press and I have some cards full bleed and some fitting nicely centered on the card with a nice small white space border around the image which for some images is perfectly fine and nice.  I also just want to say that I think GCU print quality is better then cafe press.
 
This is whole print and template size is so confusing, because when I print my image from photoshop on my printer –I select exact size - 5 x 7, and NOTHING is cut off.  Now if I resize to 4 x 6 - yes, then some elements are cut off. So in a perfect world...LOL... I would think if our images are 5 x 7 - 1500 x 2100 pixels - 300 dpi and the cards are 5 x 7  they should print exactly the same.  But I understand at GCU they have big printers with big size papers and the printing process is analog and they cant know where the paper will be cut and end.  So again...keep the important stuff in the red borders or make your border as wide as the area from the dotted line area to the edges.
 
What I really want to know is if I have everything in the red border and nothing outside the red dotted line…will that space print as white space – or do they stretch the image.  Stretching the image would be a bad idea and serve no purpose because important elements would be stretched to the edges and again might be cut off.  
 
Sorry, for my long winded post, but this is very important and I am anxious to hear some feedback about this too.  
 
Bye for now and best wishes,
Lisa Lorenz
 
"http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/LisaLorenz"
 
 

Greetings,
A lot of great questions have come up in this thread, I'll try my best to address everything.  
 
Our template is 5x7 inches and it includes a .25 inch bleed edge.  As Lisa noted, our fulfillment partner indicates that there is a .25 inch machine allowance.  So the image may be shifted slightly on the press and when cut, but it will always fall within the allowance.  Fine detail should be kept within the red dotted-line to be sure that it appears on the print.
 
This .25 inch allowance makes adding borders to an image very tricky.  If your border is visible within the red dotted-line then it will always appear on the card, however since the card may not always be perfectly centered, theres a chance that thinner borders may look uneven on print.  With a thicker border the inconstancy is hardly noticeable.  
 
We are in the process of modifying the template to so that it does address the issues that come along with borders, and we'll be working with a few artists to find an acceptable solution.  We'll let everyone know when the changes have been completed and added to the site.  
 
Leaving areas of white around your image to act as a border would have the same result as adding a colored border.  If you were to simply leave the area around the safe zone (red-dotted line) white, there's a slight chance that the white may not be included on every corner of the print.  
 
With regard to the full image being displayed on the site, we do not use a .25 inch trim edge on each corner, so there's no need to display a cropped version of the uploaded image.  We are looking into this suggestion though, to determine if there are any enhancements that can be made to either the template or the way that images are displayed.    
 
If you have any additional questions, please let me know.  
 
Shaun

Hi Shaun, thanks so much for your information and all your past help.  
 
Hi Shauna, and everyone else..This will be of interest of you to see...my new revised card.
 
I am soooo happy... I fixed my colours of provence card for a wider a border and kept lots of the blue border in the dotted area and my card is BEAUTIFUL!   Take a look...at the pic and you can see the before card and after card.  The after card is a beauty!  I also received my second card order of 18 cards and they are beautiful too.
 
"http://www.lisalorenzpaintings.com/IMG_8991-1.jpg"
 
you can see more of my card proofs at my studio blog:
 
"http://lisalorenzstudio.blogspot.com/2007/08/my-colourful-art-cards-some-proofs. html"
 
What a difference... So now I know how to handle my borders.  But I wont being do too many paintings with borders..LOL..It was soooo much work to paint a straight border liek that on my canvas.
 
Again thanks Shaun and GCU.