How to make someone feel special…
This is a guest post from Bunny at GlowMama Blog
Personalised gifts are my go-to for those hard to buy people. You know, the people who have “everything” or the people who really need to just pick their own stuff out. But personalised gifts are also my way of telling people I care. That I enjoy thinking up things they might like or might find funny. Just as a side note… I love personalised stuff for myself, too. Like, don’t get me wrong, I love Kmart as much as the next mum, but it’s nice to have stuff that’s a bit different. Stuff with meaning.
So, because I love personalised stuff, I was naturally stoked when Angela Muni (owner of Creation Station) got in touch asking if I’d like to work with her to create some stuff and do a bit of brand repping. My creative brain went WOOHOO and started spinning out into all the possibilities. It was exciting! The one thing I worried about though was whether I’d be able to effectively create what was in my head into actual products. Is this something you worry about too? Well, don’t! Creation Station has an awesome custom designer on their website that makes it easy to bring your visions to life (even if you aren’t quite sure what your vision *looks* like).
I’m an avid coffee drinker, so I thought some personalised mugs would be cool. So I popped into the “mug” section and just followed my nose from there.
I selected “white” in the drop-down menu, and then clicked on “DESIGN FROM BLANK”.
Now for the fun part! The mug shows up as a template that covers all of the useable areas – the red line is just to show the printing limit.
The sky is really the limit here. You can add writing, photos, pictures, images. You can create designs using shapes, or import your own designs that you’ve created in other software if you’re feeling fancy. I wanted to stick with the MUM + MUMLIFE = COFFEE theme, so I made two designs: One that said “have boys. Need coffee” on one side and “coffee coffee coffee” on the other (just to show how much I love coffee), and then another with “This has probably gone cold” on one side (because my coffee almost always goes cold before I get a chance to finish it) and “don’t worry, you’ve got this” on the other (because on those days where my coffee is always going cold, I could probably use a pick-me-up or pep talk from my mug).
Wee design hack: I wanted to repeat the word “coffee” three times on one side of the mug, but with the cursive writing my eyes kept messing with me and I couldn’t figure out if they were lined up or not – so I used the handy “shape” tool in the designer and made a square to line all the words up, then deleted the square. There’s also a grid you can switch on or off if that works easier for you (the Rubik’s Cube looking button on the top bar). Easy!
And just like that, I was done! You can see using the wee clock at the bottom that the whole process only took about 10 minutes – and that was with me fluffing around a bit to see what looked good.
The custom designer is so easy to use. I loved how this was a quick and cost-effective way to create something really cool and unique to me. I also made a t-shirt and a cushion cover which I’m pretty proud of! So next time you’re thinking “what on earth should I get …………?!”, personalised stuff is where it’s at. You’re welcome!
Great post! I wondered how to create a personalized mug. This is so easy!