Sending an e-card for special occasions like the one coming up, Valentine's Day, doesn't have to mean a) you couldn't get to the store on time, b) you're too cheap to spend $1.99+ on some sappy, uninspired, cheesy greeting, or c) you never update your snail mail address book list and have lost all those return envelopes. No, it could mean that you care about the earth and don't want to add to the paper in landfills, and that you're all about creating "custom" messages when store bought won't do. Yeah, that's it.

Well, if you haven't noticed, the inspiration is lacking in 99% of the e-card sites out there. We've weeded through all the junk to help you create some of the best e-cards around.

Rattlebox - Rattlebox is really very good. They have great designs, the interface is nicely designed and the themes themselves are actually decent. You can can change all or some of the text to customize the card, and embed video cards on social networking sites, blogs, etc.

Hipster cards - another witty, well designed e-card site that you would actually want to use. Please note there are some off color options so we're going to note it as - NSFW.

Someecards - their tag line is "when you care enough to hit send." These cards are pen and ink and have funny one liners.

MushyGushy - card site where you can upload you head shot into different animated themes (think JibJab) customize, and send.

Smilebox - site where you choose from various multimedia designs and personalize with photos, video, music, words, and style and share via email, blog, or print.

delivr - send a personalized postcard from photos from your Flickr account or select from the 3 million or so Dlivr offers using the Flickr API to pull back the most interesting photos with an appropriate creative commons license.

meish.org - for the anti-valentine crowd. If you hate satin bears and VD makes you want to hurl, these non-sentimental e-cards will fit the bill for you. Oh and are they funny.

That's the extent of our list but not for lack of trying. We specifically avoided the usual suspects, like American Greetings, and any site with animated gifs. If you have a favorite site you'd like to throw in the mix, please send it in.

Thanks FF!