Looking for something better then plain paper and those pre-made ones are
expensive. What kind of paper should I be looking at.
I have a Canon IP4000 inkjet.
Using as a basis of comparison,
a 500 sheet ream of letter size 92bright office paper is about $5 CAD
at the local staples. or $0.01 per sheet
a 20 sheet pack of Staples brand JC inserts is $20 CAD before taxes,
or $1 each sheet.
(as you might have guessed, I referenced Staples Canadian online site
for this)
Option 1: Rag paper (paper with some cotton content) is a high grade
paper, that's commonly used for special documents like legal papers,
awards, certificates, invitations, etc. Trivia: Rag paper with 75%
cotton content or higher has watermark embedded in it with the
manufacturer and a region code just in case you have any ideas about
printing money with it. Seems to average about $37 for 500 sheets of
the 100% cotton stuff, which works out to about $0.08 per sheet.
Option 2: Bristol Board. It's heavy card stock, and you may remember
it as the stuff you made your Science fair display with in grade
school. They only seem to sell the stuff in big poster size sheets
though. A local store sells a 10 pack of 22"x28" for $7 CAD. That's
$0.70 per sheet, but seeing as you'd probably cut it into quarters
(11x7) to fit them into the printer, $0.18 per quarter sheet is
probably a fairer comparison. This stuff is really thick and stiff,
so some printers might not even be able to reliably feed this stuff.
Option 3: Card (aka Cover) stock. It's what you print greeting cards
and booklet covers with. This is probably the closest you'll find to
what the pre-cut sheets are cut from. $15 CAD for a pack of 250
sheets, or $0.06 per letter size sheet. Probably the closest you'll
get to what the inserts are cut from.
A lot more expensive than office paper, but I guess all of these are a
whole lot cheaper than the precut sheets.
Heck, at a buck a sheet for the precut inserts, you could probably use
photo paper and still have it work out cheaper.