Personalized Gift Tips

Getting the Sports Nut a Gift

Getting the "sports nut" that you know a gift should be easy, right? Definitely wrong. This is one of the most difficult gifts you can get as you need to know what is right in this person's "sports world."

1. Find out favorite teams - Which teams appeal most to the person receiving the gift. Firstly, which is his or at times her favorite sport and then find out within that sport which teams are the favorites.

2. Know who they like and dislike - Make sure you know who they like in their "team." Even though they have a favorite team, that does not mean they like every single player in there. Also, know who is popular in that team if you can't find out who exactly they like.

3. Do not buy the generic "autographed" gift or jersey. Most of the time people spend too much money on these items. Go for a unique item with a logo on it. There are a number of new sporting products that have sport logos on them. For conservative buyers jerseys and shirts are good but if you go for this, it's a good idea to buy them a set. Sometimes a household item with a logo may do the trick depending on the occasion. A framed picture or something that can be mounted on the wall is also a good choice.

Finding a Discounted Personalized Gift

If you're looking for a great quality personalized gift, don't be shy to shop in your local DollarSavers or $1 stores. A lot of these stores have a runoff of surplus gifts that other stores couldn't sell.

1. Do not buy food products unless the person who is receiving the gift is very much into a certain food type like Vegan or any ethnic food. Chocolates unless used on Valentine's Day are a very generic gift.

2. Try to find a unique product within the area of interest: For example, if you know the person likes Africa, try finding something over e-bay that is from Africa and unique only to that country. Not something you might find right here in the U.S. Do a quick online search for that area of interest suitable to the person and try to find something important in that area still within your budget.

3. Wrapping counts. Theme wrapping is great when it can be accomplished. If you're wrapping about an African gift, use brown postal paper and stamp it with henna and brown colors. If you have kids, use them to do this as a project for creating wrapping paper. Tie it with a dyed and/or natural mix of colored raffia as a finishing touch. You could fashion the gift label in the form of a baggage claim ticket. Those types of templates can be downloaded from the internet.

Let your creativity take over. Remember, its not the cost of the gift, its the uniqueness of it.

Guidelines to Designing the Right Gift For the Right Person

Want to select or design a gift but haven't found the right gift choice yet? Here's a few tips on criteria to use when finding that perfect something:

Level of friendship - Three categories people fall into are close friends/relatives, distant friends/relatives, coworkers (who may fall between these categories), and acquaintances.

Close Friends/Relatives: As these are people you are closest to, think of their likes and dislikes and when first trying to select a gift first think of their age, gender and other demographic information on them, then narrow it down by a person's character. An example would be trying to select a gift for your sister and husband in their early 30's who live in the suburbs. If you are planning a joint gift make sure the gift has a balance of femininity and masculinity. A gift basket would be a good choice as you could personalize items for both of them in the basket. Separate gifts would require a financial balance as you don't want to offend one spouse. You could split-theme the basket into hers/his. If your sister likes cats and her hubbie likes baseball, you could select several cat items useful in the home (potholders, candleholders, picture frames with cats on them, etc.).

Distant Friends/Relatives: As you know less about them, try to run with demographics first and use what you do know about them to conclude whether you are picking correctly. If you don't know much about a nephew for example, but you know he's about age 12, try looking at sites like etoys.com or kaybeetoystores.com and selecting an age at least one to two years higher than his age. Also look at their categories of most purchased or most popular products. Then narrow down by what you know are his interests. If you have no idea at all, a safe bet is an electronic toy maybe mimicking an ipod or a video game if they have the right console.

Acquaintances - These are the easiest people to buy for. You know the least about them and they probably expect even less from you. For this, go by the current trend. If candles are in, purchase a nice sized aromatherapy one if a female. If a male, gourmet food products including herbs are a nice choice. Or maybe even a mini "male" gift basket including nice things that maybe go with his job or hobby.

Six Ideas For Customized Hoodies

Customized hoodies make the ideal garment for everyone on your shopping list. Make customized hoodies for your girlfriends, parents or even for promotional events. Pick out a style, color and personalize it with text, graphics or a logo. We've compiled six ideas for customized hoodies to get your creative juices going.

• Customized hoodies don't have to be thick or bulky. For customized hoodies even your most stylish girlfriend would love, get a sleek baby rib cotton sleeveless hoody and add a simple cool phrase.
• For the woman who's almost due, get her a custom hoody in a stretch fleece knit. Add a graphic like, “Almost Due” for a cute personalized gift.
• Are Mom and Dad fans of their college football team? Get them matching zip hoodies in their team colors and add a slogan cheering their team on the back.
• For tradeshows, promotional events or large-scale parties, print up pullover customized hoodies advertising the occasion.
• Customized hoodies work great for dogs, too. You can buy one made just for your favorite pooch. Personalize it with his name or throw in a bit of canine humor.
• Custom hoodies make adorable gifts for the littlest of babes. Get a pint-sized zip-up hoody and embroider a sweet nickname. Try phrases like “Princess,” “Diva,” or “Babe.”

Four Tricks For Getting Iron-on Transfers Right

Getting iron-on transfers to look good on custom t-shirts takes a bit of know-how and technique. To get your custom t-shirts looking picture perfect, follow our tricks of the trade.

• Before you decide to try out the transfer on an actual shirt, do a test print. There's always a bit of difference in the way things look on the screen versus an actual print. Once you've printed, you can view the actual color, look and scale of the artwork. Keep in mind that ink colors will look different on different kinds of papers.
• Don't forget to mirror your image before you print. Iron-on transfers are mirror images of what you'll see on the actual shirt. If you're looking at the image the way you would see it on a tee, you still have to reverse the image.
• Your custom t-shirts will look their best when you apply the iron-on transfers with a very high heat. Make sure your iron is set to the appropriate temperature and that you've given it enough time to warm up. Or better yet, use a heat press.
• If you've put a white graphic into your design, remember that white does not print. What you'll end up getting is the fabric where the white graphic should have been.