This is going to be fun. The super gift we are about to discuss here will drive you down the memory lane to the destination, rather, to the source from where everything started. It has been many years since, and lots of memory got piled up; some sweet and some not so sweet. Take the opportunity presented by this special occasion to inject again the freshness of a honeymooner to your relationship.

The gift idea we are talking about is quite simple, and I warn you, do not let the deceptive simplicity of the idea cast you down. This gift will be very powerful in inducing the right emotion from the recipient. The perfect gift will not only make her day, but it will be with her for really long time.

I am talking about gifting a lovely satin bed sheet. A satin bed sheet with a custom print made from the photographs that will convey the story of the wonderful time you spent together on your romantic honeymoon. I am suggesting you to use bed sheet & the accompanying pillow covers as a medium to convey the very first chapter of your love story. Every night, the bed sheet will make you relive the moments on which time has put a thick layer.

Great for Wife or Husband

Although, this gift has been conceived with female partners (wives) in mind; this can be gifted to the male partners (husbands) as well.

This gift idea is designed for the couples who are married for at least 4-5 years. You can give this perfect gift on the day of your marriage anniversary, may be on the 5^th marriage anniversary or the later one.

Anatomy of the perfect gift

I am happy that till now I have been able to hold your attention. Without wasting any more moment, we will move forward, and learn how to make this Perfect Gift. To make this gift, you will need a plain satin bed sheet, some sweet honeymoon photographs, a little knowledge of Photoshop or any image enhancing software (click here to see a list of photo enchancing software), and the willingness to give your love a precious gift.

We start with selecting a good quality, light color bed sheet, preferably white. The second step leads us to our digital photo album. If you did not click pictures using digital camera, you can also use printed photograph; just scan each of them on at least 300 dpi, and enhance the photographs in Photoshop. If you still have the negatives of the picture then I will suggest you to get the negative scanned using a good quality negative photo scanner.

Start selecting the images you want to put on the bed sheet, but before doing that decide a theme for the bed sheet. Depending upon your personal taste, you can either choose pictures of cozy and intimate moments, or the time you two spent riding a boat, watching the beautiful sunset, walking hand in hand, screaming on a joyride etc., or you can consider using a blend of the two. I am not setting any rule here because this is your gift, and you need to put your own feeling in this perfect gift.

Arranging the selected pictures will follow the picture selection process. Use the picture that you feel was the defining moment of your relationship in the center of the bed sheet. For example, you can use a picture of your first kiss, your first day on honeymoon, your engagement or the time when you proposed her at the center.

Make a montage using this picture in the center, and arrange rest of the pictures thematically around it. You can also add scanned copies of greeting cards, love letters or the digital version of each one of them in the montage. Use a clear handwriting font to retype the love letter you sent or received through e-mails, e-cards that you sent or received, or the transcripts of sweet chats that you had. Based on your preference, you can also add some design elements to the montage. The central picture of this montage will be quite big. It should take up the whole central area. Anything in excess of 20″X24″ will do.

Once the montage is ready send it and the bed sheet you selected for printing. Be careful in selecting whom you are going to give the responsibility to do the printing work (click here to see a list of the best bed clothes printing company). The printer who specializes in creating custom printed bed sheets or cloths should only be chosen for creating this gift. If you don’t know one already then search the Internet and business directories for such printers. Finding a printer can be a bit challenging, but this will be worth the effort.

Who can Give this Perfect Gift?

A husband and also a wife can be the one who should consider giving this gift.

Other Occasion

This perfect gift can also be given on valentine day, but the valentine day should not be the one that comes immediately after the marriage. Wait for at least 2-3 years before this gift can spell its magic.

What’s the idea?

The gift idea I am going to discuss here is aimed to achieve that goal only. We are discussing here about gifting customized office stationary to your dad, granddad, husband, boyfriend, or to any loved one. The idea is to make your loved one’s office space look more personal by making small changes in the environment in which he or she works. I am asking you to gift a set of personalized office stationary. This gift will always keep you at the back of his or her mind while she is busy creating that important presentation, or churning out the last quarter’s sales report. Customizing the office stationary is not going to be very difficult.

What to brand?

Let’s start the process with customizing the mouse pad then move to personalizing paperweight, passing through a personalized coffee mug.

How to do it?

To create a customized office stationary, all you need to do is to create the design, and the rest of the work can be outsourced to the company specializing in creating customized stuffs. There are many such service providers on the Internet, just Google it and you will get a list of companies that will help you create a customized coffee mug, mouse pad, and even paperweight. You can locate these custom printers in a shopping mall as well.

Custom Mouse Pad

To create a custom mouse pad, you need one or more photographs: multiple pictures, if you want to make a collage of pictures reminding the recipient of the wonderful time he spent with you in the years gone by, and one picture, if you want to elicit just one emotion by reminding the recipient of any one particular occasion.

The first step in the process of creation is to optimize the picture using Photoshop, or any similar software, after that resize the image to size of the mouse pad. You can also include the message that you want to convey, or some design element to make it more beautiful. You can consider using some vector floral borders, or may be consider using some abstract border to beautify the mouse pad.

Custom Paperweight

I will suggest using minimalistic design for the paperweight; rather no design at all, just a small message and a very light, engraved border at the bottom of the text. I will suggest you to use a stainless steel paperweight for this purpose; one that has velvety base. You can go for any shape: square, round, hexagonal, or you can also use heart-shaped paperweight. Write a one-line message using calligraphic font, and add a very light border at the bottom of the text. The message can be anything, you may want: “Love You Dad,” “Miss You,” “Thinking about You,” etc. The only consideration should be the length of the message. It should not exceed 4-5 words in length. Do not go for the obvious one that I wrote above, be creative and let your personal touch be felt through the message.

Custom Coffee Mug

Personalizing a coffee mug is the easiest of all as lot many companies and even small shops in big shopping malls offer such services. I will suggest using a picture on the coffee mug, rather two pictures. One of the person whom you are gifting the customized office stationary, and the second one will be your, or may be of the person the recipient likes most. Use a three-word message as well, and that’s it. But before sending the pictures off for printing on the coffee mug, optimize it for quality and size using Photoshop.

Seed of the family tree

Your grandma has grown older by one more year, and her memory of the life lived so far is getting buried deep under the thick deposit of time. Now is the time to help her relive the moments, she once had. Let’s gift her something that she will cherish for rest of her life. We are asking you to give her a custom-made three-dimensional, metallic family tree. The family tree should look like an actual tree with root, stems, shoots, branches, and leaves. It should look as strong as a banyan tree.

Growing the family tree

This perfect gift has two parts: one ideation and visualization, and another creation (molding). For the ideation part, you may need your grandmother’s assistance, but get her help covertly. And for the creation part, you will need professional caster. Let’s begin with explaining the creation part of the perfect gift.

The family tree you are going to make for your granny should be made of metal. You can get a gold plating or silver plating done on the family tree. Getting this done will not be difficult nor will be the ideation and visualization part. If you cannot find a professional caster with a creative bend in your locality, you can search the Internet to find the right guy to create this super gift for you. Do not hesitate to ask the caster to show their sample works. Also ask for referrals. This will give you a fair knowledge about their claims and their expertise.

After short-listing 3-4 professional casters, you can begin the ideation part of the custom gift. The first step in the process is to make a list of the names of the people related to your granny, and how they are related. Your list may include the following: Your granny’s Grandfathers (father as well as mother side), her grandmothers (father as well as mother side), her father, her mother, her uncles, her aunts, her husband, her sons and daughters, her grandchildren etc. Though you are including your granny’s grandfathers and grandmothers in the family tree, make sure, she is the center of attraction in the family tree.

Make decorated gold-plated or silver-plated pendants that will contain the pictures and the names of the people you are going to put on the family tree. Make your granny and her husband’s pendant bigger and more attractive, this way you can make her the center of attraction on the family tree.

Make the root, and the stem near the root broad enough to sustain the load of the branches and leaves. Write a personalized message on the front face of the family tree’s base. You can write things like, “The Roots and Shoots of Smith’s Family Tree.” Put the eldest people of the family (grandparents of your granny) on the lowest branch, and on the branches above that put their children (granny’s mother, father, uncles and aunts). Follow the same pattern until you reach the top and you are finished putting every member of your family on the family tree.

The idea behind this arrangement is this: by putting your granny’s grandparents near the root of the tree, you are drawing a visual analogy between the people who are at the root and the root of the tree. You are saying they have provided the vitality necessary to keep the family tree flourishing, and the youngest at the top of the family tree denotes its growing nature.

Custom magazine cover demystified

It has been many years since you have met for the first time, exchanged smiles, looked eyes into eyes, and then there was a perfect Kodak moment. The time stopped, sun dimmed, the stars glittered throwing away brilliant light, and the wind blew lovingly. It was a perfect Kodak moment. What if you could freeze the time there? What if you could make it last longer? What if you could…?

The gift idea we are going to share will make “your perfect Kodak moment “eternal. This gift is neither for her, nor for you, but this gift is perfect both of you. We are asking you to gift her a custom made magazine cover for this anniversary. She will be more than delighted to see this gift as well as the sparkle in your eyes and smile on your face.

Custom magazine cover explained

To create this custom magazine cover you will need a working knowledge of image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source), and page designing software like Adobe PageMaker or Quark Express. To come up with creative lines for the cover, you will need free-flying imagination, and a deep desire to gift your wife a highly personalized creative gift.

The first step in the process of creating this personalized gift is to search for an ideal magazine cover on which you will base the layout and the design of your super gift. Create a base layout for the magazine cover by putting appropriate place-holders for the title, date, month, year, issue, volume, price, featuring attractions, titles of imaginary articles, and the cover image.

Now it’s the time to find an appropriate picture for the cover image. I will suggest you to use the portrait picture that was clicked on the day of your marriage or engagement. Use any image editing software to remove the background from the selected cover image. The image editing software will further be used to optimize the cover image for printing.

The next step is to think of a name for the magazine. Show your creativity and come up with an attractive name that should not lose its charm after a year or two “Our Wedding”, “Marital Bliss”, “Wedding Bells”, “Big Day” etc could be used.

The date, month and year of your wedding should be filled in the appropriate placeholders. Volume for this magazine cover will be ‘one’, and issue will also be ‘one’. In the placeholder for price write ‘priceless’ and besides that write ‘not for sale’. Write ‘Fifth Marriage Anniversary’ or ‘Five Blissful Years’ in the main attraction feature placeholder. Your love message for her will become names of the imaginary articles. An imaginary page number should be placed beneath each imaginary article (love message). Choose a background of your liking and give the final touch to the magazine cover.

Custom magazine creation

Getting this custom gift printed will not be difficult, nor will be framing; still, you need to be careful in choosing the printer and the photo framer. Finding a good quality printer and a photo framer will not be difficult. Enter the appropriate keywords, and any of the major search engines will fetch a huge list containing names, addresses and websites of printers as well as photo framers. Ask for the price-list and samples from each of them. Ask each of them to send you printed samples.

The size of the magazine cover should be at least 20X24 inches, if you want it to be visible from a distance.

Custom calendar idea

As the implied description in the introductory paragraph suggests, this gift will overwhelm your girlfriend/wife. She will be taken over by the emotion, and will be searching all over for the words; instead, she will come and put her arms around your neck planting a passionate kiss on your lips. The idea is to give her a custom-made calendar using her images or the images of the most romantic moments you shared.

Creating the custom calendar

The most important skill required to create this gift is your imagination. You will also need tools like Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source), and Adobe Indesign or Quark Express to give a definite shape to your imagination. Start with making the layout for the calendar, but before starting the designing work, you can consider visiting the Internet, and search for the available calendar designs. The objective behind this exercise this activity is to draw inspiration from some professionally made world-class calendar. If you are a designer by profession or passion, and feel you can come up with a really innovative design then skip this step, and move to the next step.

By now, after going through a handful of professional calendars, you must have got idea about what you want to create. If you are still clueless, take a professional calendar of your choice and mimic the layout using Adobe Indesign or Quark Express. Once you are done with creating the basic layout, you should move to dig twelve most beautiful images (one each for one each month of the year) from your digital photo albums (preferably), or from your collections of printed photographs.

Scan the images using at least 300dpi resolution (the higher the resolution better will be the effect), if you have selected printed photographs. Optimize all twelve images for sizes and quality using Adobe Photoshop or Gimp.

The next step is to select the appropriate font for the calendar. If you want you can buy a commercial font, or search for the free versions. Browse through the online font directories or search the Internet to find the font suitable for the mood you want to create.

Take the layout you have created, and use the chosen font to write days, dates, months and year of the calendar. You can use your system’s calendar as a point of reference while creating the custom calendar. Now, it’s time to put images in the designated boxes. You can personalize the super gift even further by adding personal messages as captions to each of the twelve images. A romantic note each on every page of the calendar can also be placed near the bottom. You will need a different font to write the personal message and the romantic note.

Create a cover for the custom calendar using a thin translucent film. Craft a beautiful custom message like the following and write it using a golden or silver handwriting or calligraphy font:

“For my love…

…just to say, how much I love you!

…yours Coochypoo”

Final step

Getting this custom calendar printed will not be very difficult. There are many web-based printers that will help you in getting this custom gift printed. You can even search your local business directory for the printers specializing in this kind of job. Ask for samples and rates, and go with the one who does the best job at the most competitive price. Always remember, this gift is for your love so quality should come first not the price. She will love you for this.

Personalized gift idea

You can provide many reasons, if “why do you give a gift” question is asked, but each one of us will at least agree when I say, we gift because we care for the recipient, or at least we want to convey that we care for them. The super gift I am suggesting here will do exactly that. It will tell your beloved how much you care for her, and to what length you can go for her. I am asking you to make her birthday special for her by personalizing her environs. Make her feel special and pampered today.

Personalizing her surroundings

You will not need many tools to create this super gift. All you will need is lots of time and love for your wife. The idea is to make your presence felt on her birthday despite the fact that you are 500 miles away from her fulfilling your official duty. Word of caution: Do not let your plan leak out. If she gets to know about your intention, the fun of giving this gift will be gone. Surprise is the main ingredient. You have to perform as an undercover gifting agent. Take sufficient time in your hand to make her birthday special. You can give this gift even if you are with her, in the city.

Start with morning, and make a list of things she typically does after waking up. See what all you can modify. If she wakes up and goes directly to the bathroom to wash her face, a surprise should be waiting for her near the bathroom’s wash basin. A message like, “Good morning honey, you look beautiful today. Happy birthday! A tight hug!” could be placed there. If her second step is to fetch water from refrigerator, a rose with your message should be waiting there to greet her good morning. If this step is followed by going to kitchen for tea, a card, or just a message saying how much you miss her tea today should be placed beneath the tea container.

Make a list of the work she does in the afternoon, evening and night; at office, at home and see what all you can customize. Do not rush to wish her happy birthday yet, let the gift culminate up to a very warm happy birthday in the night. You should not forget to customize her cell phone ring tone, alarm clock, landline’s ringtone, and also leave a warm message in the answering machine preprogrammed to play when she leaves for work. The car she drives should have an I love you card waiting on the driving seat, and her music player should also play your message followed by her favorite music (or the music that has a romantic value for both of you) once she turns the ignition on.

Send flowers to her office and a big cake to your home in the evening. Ask her friends to send her your love, when she reaches office. You can also ask her cell phone company to call her and greet her, and to play her favorite tune after calling her. Arrange for sweet, lovely message as well. You can buy a short messaging pack and ask the seller to send her some beautiful messages at sporadic intervals. This custom gift will keep her happy and entertained throughout the day. She will feel, you are right there, beside her, all day, despite your being out of town on business.

Her day should culminate on your calling her, just after she enters home and sees the cake. Call her and just say, “Happy Birthday”. It will do the magic, her eyes will become moist, her voice will quiver, and her heart will be over joyous.

You can also think of installing 2-3 cameras one each in the bedroom, kitchen and living room to record her expressions and reactions. Preprogram the camera based on her daily routine, and watch the recoding with her once you are back. On the cost of repeating I must say: surprise is the key element of this personalized super gift. If the plan is leaked, the super gift will not have the desired effect.

Concept

How many times did you tell your father how much you love him; what he means to you, and how much you think about him and about what all he did for you? On this Father’s day, say everything you ever wanted to say through a custom made comic book. This super gift will tell your father what a great father he has been so far!

Storyboard

The process of custom comic book creation begins with writing down the things you want to say to your father. Do not write everything that happened while you were growing up; talk about those situations or incidence when your father played a vital role.

Talk about the walks you took with him as a kid when you visited your grandparents. Tell him how much those walks meant to you, and how those walks and several other chit chats helped you understand your life better. Talk about the birthday gifts he gave you. Talk about the sleepless nights he spent by your bedside when you were ill. Tell him that he was your childhood hero. Tell him how you always imitated him while playing games with friends. Tell him, for you, how important are the time that you spent together? Tell him how much you care for him. Say thank you to your father on this Father’s Day through this personalized gift.

Your comic book can include everything said above, or just one or two incidences that explains how much you care for him, and how much he means to you. This custom gift could be of either 4-6 pages or 12-16 pages, or even more. The thickness of the comic book will essentially depend upon the kind of money you want to spend on this super gift.

Dialogues & Characters

The closer you will get to the end of the previous section, the clearer the storyline will become. Now, it is time to do some dialogue writing. As you know, comics are kind of movie storyboards: a visual storytelling device. Hence, unlike in stories, less and less of narration and more and more interpersonal dialogues are used in a comic book. Before writing dialogues for you and your father, who are in the lead role, you will need to consider the role of minor characters as well, and how many of them will be present in your comic book.

Always remember to keep the dialogue part as natural as you can. The word spoken by the character in your comic book should resemble the actual word spoken in day-to-day life by the people you are personifying in the comic book.

Illustration

Unlike the last two sections, which will be done completely by you, you will need help of professional illustrator to do the next section. You can do the illustration yourself, if you know the art of illustration, and if you are not the illustration type, you can seek help of any professional illustrator. Finding one will not be difficult. Do not forget to check the work experience of the illustrator before giving him the illustration job. Ascertain that he is fluent with illustration software like Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, etc. as you will need the illustration in digital format for printing,

You will need to provide your childhood pictures, pictures of your father when you were young as well as the pictures of other characters and of locations in which the story is set to put the comic book in the proper context.

Illustrator will take time to create the comic book. Meanwhile, you can search for the printers. You must see the sample works of different printers before trusting him with the creation of this personalized super gift. You can search the Internet and local business directory for quality printers in your locality. You can also seek help of web-based printing companies to get the comic book printed.

The lovey-dovey wedding idea

The super gift idea that I am sharing here will make the marriage of your son/daughter/friend not only personal but very, very memorable. I am asking you to personalize his or her wedding by distributing bride’s as well as groom’s favorite candies and cookies among the guests attending the marriage, along with a note stating the sweet, little story behind the candies and cookies distribution. If you want, you can also get one childhood photo of the bride as well as of the groom printed on the cover-side of the note.

This activity will not only involve everyone present at the party, but it will also make the marriage a memorable super event. How many marriages do you know of that uses such innovative technique to personalize the wedding? The point is: do this and the bride and the groom will be taken over by the true joyful emotion at the sight of their guests indulging in the secret fantasy of bride and groom’s childhood.

The wedding planner

Creating this custom gift is fairly simple, and can be done with a very little effort. You should be extremely cautious while collecting information about the candies and cookies he or she as well as his or her would-be better half liked when they were kids as you would not like to disclose your plans beforehand.

Once you got the information you were seeking, the next step is to procure the cookies and candies in sufficient quantity. To get the idea about how many cookies and candies you are going to need, you have to find the following:

• The number of guests who will be present at the wedding.
• How many candies and cookies will you be giving to each guest?

After getting the numbers right, it is time to write the story behind the candies and cookies distribution. You should use calligraphy or handwriting font to write the story. Write the story using a flowery language, and keep the story short. The size of the note should not be more than 5 X 4 inches. You can also use decorative borders, if you wish to adorn the note.

You will need a page designing and lay out making software like Quark Express, or Adobe Indesign to design the note. You can also use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe illustrator, or Corel Draw for this purpose.

On the cover-side of the note, put one picture each of the bride and the groom clicked when they were kids or may be toddler. If you want to add a headline or a caption to the image, feel free to do that. You will need   Adobe Photoshop or Gimp (open source) to optimize the images for the note.

The wedding gift

How are you planning to distribute it? C’mon, don’t tell me that you just planning to hand the candies, cookies and note over to your guests! Kidding, right? Jokes apart, packaging and the delivery of the super gift is as important as the gift itself.

For packaging, you can use a small box made of pristine white or elegant black leather. On top-face of the box, get the name of the bride and the groom engraved along with the salutation for the receiver. Use thin, golden or silver font for the purpose. Put the candies and cookies in the box, keep the note on top of them, and hand the box over to every guest before the ritual starts.

Finding a box manufacturer will not be very difficult. Search the Internet for the companies that specialize in gift wrapping, or you can also contact companies that make small boxes for watches. Ask for their quotes, and go with the one who offers the most competitive price.

The custom blanket Idea

When we marry, we have many things to take care of. We are starting a new family, so we need to buy a number of small and big things for daily uses. Hence, I am suggesting here a custom gift that not only will protect them, keep the newly-wed couple warm, and create a cozy environment for them in the favorite corner of their room, but it will also strike one important thing out from the couple’s to-buy list. This way you will help the newly-wed couple in starting a new life. A blanket with a personalized message woven in the corner is the gift I am suggesting you to give to your friend, friend’s son/ daughter or, family friend’s son/daughter on his or her wedding. It will help them in starting a new life, and this super gift will last many years that essentially means you will not be forgotten for years to come.

Personalizing the blanket

The process of creating a personalized blanket starts with writing the personal message you want to put at the corner of the blanket. Write a small message wishing the couple happy married life and sign the message with your name’s initials. Keep the initials at the corner and use a very small font to write them. Make the initials almost invisible. Do not make the initials visible from distance. How many people do you know who will like to use any gift that has the name (s) of the giver prominently visible from a distance?

While crafting the personal message, always remember, the custom gift you are giving will be used for many years, so an attempt should be made to make the message timeless. The meaning of the message should not lose relevance after a passage of time.

Once the message is ready, it’s time to shop for the blanket. The size, design and the quality of the blanket depends upon your taste and budget. If you want your personalized gift to be of some practical value for the recipient, buy the blanket that suits the recipient taste. You do not need to go very far stretching your budget. You can do this within your budget as well. All you need to do is some research.

The next step in the creation of this super gift is printing or weaving and stitching of the personal message at the corner of the blanket. As you guessed, I am suggesting here two options: either you can get the message woven by a professional embroidery maker at the corner of the blanket, or you can get it printed on a 4X4 inches leather piece, or velvet cloth, etc.

The look and feel of the output will depend upon the quality of the embroidery maker for the former alternative and the quality of printing company for the latter option. Finding neither a good quality embroidery maker will be difficult, nor will finding a good reliable company to make a squarish label be nerve-wracking.

Do not forget to ask question. Ask as many questions as you want to ask while purchasing blanket or shopping for a professional or a company to get the message part created and affixed to the blanket. Get a nice wrap for the super gift and a broad smile for your lips before entering the marriage party.