Time to Make Your Custom Christmas Gifts!

Only 35 more days until Christmas! I know you don't want to hear about it yet but the time will fly by quicker than you think. If you're planning to make custom gifts for Christmas the time to start is now! I know you may be thinking that a family history book or family cookbook would take too long to put together. Calendars... you can never find enough of the right photos? Here's an idea that's quick to create, inexpensive, very personal, and is sure to get you oohs and ahhhs.

Remember your loved one with a photo Christmas ornament!

Custom Christmas ornaments are a snap to create at CafePress. All you have to do is go the site, click on "Make Your Own Stuff", then "Fun Stuff", then scroll down till you see the ornaments (round or oval) and click on one. The web site will take you step-by-step through uploading your photo and ordering your ornaments. You can literally do this start to finish in less than 15 minutes! And the price can't be beat... $5.99 per ornament! (Plus a small charge for shipping.) These aren't tacky-looking plastic ornaments, they're ceramic. And they are beautiful.


These are the ones I created just last week. Aren't they lovely? I collect Christmas ornaments and I add new ones to my personal collection each year. So these I made for myself, not as gifts. These are remembrance ornaments. I lost my mother this year, and my cat and cousin last year. I created an ornament for each of them that will hang on my tree. On the backs of each, I wrote a short message in permanent marker. I've made some photo ornaments in the past inserting photos into photo-frame ornaments I bought at the store, only to find that the photos had faded by the next year. These photos ornaments won't do that!


Here are some custom Christmas ornament ideas for all you genealogists and family historians.

• If you attended a wedding this year and took pictures of the bride and groom (you did take your camera didn't you?) you can make the most unique and appreciated "First Christmas Together" ornament they will ever see! A great Christmas gift!
  


• How about set of 4 ornaments on a common theme for a friend... say the two of you together over the years. They will love it!
  


• If you have vintage family photos you could make a fabulous set of ornaments that will have visitors to your home asking, "Where ever did you get these?". I'm planning to do this with some of my period family photos... one from each decade.
  


• Got teenagers in your house? Surprise them with one of these in their Christmas stocking. They'll treasure a photo ornament of themselves with their boyfriend/girlfriend!
  


• Never know what to get for your elderly aunt, mother, father, neighbor? Make them a set of four ornaments featuring the faces of their loved ones! Even if they don't put up a Christmas tree they'll find a place to hang them!
  


• Even younger children and preteens will get a kick out of receiving a photo ornament with them and their BFF (best friend forever)!
  


• You could do a set of travel photos from places you've visited. You can enjoy them on your tree now and pass them down to your children or grandchildren as a remembrance of you in years to come!

The possibilities are endless. The pleasure they bring will be as well.

A bit of advice if you decide to create your own custom ornament. Keep to simple photos. Close-up portraits with solid backgrounds work very well. You can use an image that has a whole scene in it but people will have to lean in close to see what it is.

Ready to get started? Here's the place...

Now go get creative with your genealogy!

Family Walkin' Shirts

The Alzheimer's Association Memory Walk® events are coming up in the next few weeks. If you plan to participate in a walk to support this cause that is (or should be) very near and dear to the heart of every family historian, you'll want to wear team (family) t-shirts. I know you think this may sound corny but believe me you'll feel like the poor relation if you/your team shows up for the walk without them. For some (families), it's about remembering their loved one who's suffered from this dreaded disease. For others (businesses or organizations), it's about joining together to support the community and/or the Alzheimer's Association. Regardless of why you participate in the walk you'll look ever so much more "with it" if you and yours have a t-shirt to wear. It's sort of a badge of pride so to speak.

Creating a custom t-shirt is really easy to do. Let's look at the simple steps involved...

• Register for the Memory Walk event near you. Once you do you'll be given contact information for a coordinator near you.


• Call or email your local coordinator and ask them to send you the Memory Walk logo art. These are JPG files easily sent by email.


• For a family t-shirt, pull up one or more of your favorite family photos in your photo editing program of choice (I recommend Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 ), add the name of your loved one or your family, add the Memory Walk logo, and save your file.
  


• For a business or organization team t-shirt, get a copy of your company or organization's logo and open it in your photo editing software, add a snappy saying like "Boy Scout Troop 123 is taking steps to end Alzheimer's Disease" along with the Memory Walk logo and save the file.
  


• Go to CafePress.com. Click on "Make Your Own Stuff" and follow the simple steps to create your t-shirts. Then you can order them for all of your family or save the artwork in your own (free) store for the members of your business or organization to order up themselves.
  

It's just that easy! But you should get started on the project now because you know how things have a tendency to go wonky when you're right up against a deadline ;-)

And here's a bit of sage advice for you, be careful about copyright infringement. I created a piece of artwork loosely based on the I Love Lucy TV show (my mom's name was Lucy). I'll show it here as an example of what not to do. Now personally, I didn't think it was all that similar to the show's logo but I guess I'm a better graphic artist than I thought ;-) The folks at CafePress refused the order on the basis of possible copyright infringement.
So I had to alter the artwork a bit and the shirts ended up looking like this.


I'll be walking in the Memory Walk in my area on August 25th along with several of my family members. We're supporting the cause and I encourage you to get involved also. If you'd like to read why I'm supporting the cause you can do so here. If you don't want to walk yourself or can't, consider sponsoring a walker. We'd appreciate your support!

Get creative with your genealogy and support a worthwhile cause while you're at it!

Wearing Your Coat of Arms

Once you've designed your coat of arms it's time to show it off. One of the most fun ways to do that is to wear it. There are any number of ways you can wear your coat of arms from lapel buttons to baseball caps, and from thong undies to a full sweat suit. You can even put it on your dog!

All you need to do is visit CafePress.com, click on "Make your own stuff", choose your attire (there are many, many styles to choose from for men, women, juniors, kids, and yes even dogs), upload your coat of arms image, and place your order. There are no minimum orders although you can get a very nice discount for bulk orders of 15 or more of the same item :-) And that's all there is to it. Really. And I can personally vouch for the quality of the items you'll get from CafePress.com.

Here's a photo of an item I designed and ordered from CafePress.com.

Now is that cool or what? And they have tshirts, sweatshirts, lingerie, tank tops, and more. You can even have gifts made such as, clocks, messenger bags, tote bags, teddy bears, baby bibs, trivets and other great stuff! Wear your coat of arms with pride to the next genealogy event you attend. Everyone will be asking you, "Where'd you get that?"

Coming up next: Displaying Your Coat of Arms

Other posts on this topic:
Why You Need to Design a Coat of Arms for Your Family
Dissecting A Coat of Arms Achievement
Create a Coat of Arms: Design Ideas
Create a Coat of Arms: Design Considerations
Using Clipart To Create A Coat of Arms

Custom Family Reunion T-shirts

One of the best things about families and family histories is that each family is unique and each family's story is unique. At the same time, families have common bonds that they share like a common surname, DNA, residence, community, and ethnicity. Genealogists uncover a lot of information in the course of their research, so they become keenly aware of both the uniqueness and commonness on family trees. That puts them in a unique position to create some wonderful one-of-a-kind items for all their family members. But how can something be one-of-a-kind and available to all family members at the same time?

Welcome to the world of CafePress.com!



CP is a wonderful resource for the creative genealogist. It's so easy to create a simple but unique piece of artwork and have it printed on a wide variety of items. T-shirts and sweatshirts, baseball caps and tote bags, calendars, ornaments, and much more are made to order with your unique artwork on them. You can create one design unique to your family and at the same time share the design with other family members!

Summer is here and it's a popular time for family reunions. Why not make up something special just for your family members to wear to the reunion? All you have to do is create one design. Then if you open a CafePress shop (for free) your family members can go online and order whatever style and color of t-shirt they like with your design on it. It will be mailed directly to them and you don't have be bothered guessing how many of which sizes to order. You don't have to be bothered with packing and mailing either. CafePress does it all for you! You can even use it as a family fund raising opportunity to raise money to cover some of the reunion expenses, make a family donation to a charity, or put the money towards the publication of a family history. The possibilities are endless.

Stuck for some design ideas? Here's some:

• Use a flag representing your ethnic heritage and write the family surname below it.


• If you have a funny or charming old family photograph, use that with short quip like "Can you believe we're related?" or "Beauty runs in our family" and put the surname below that.
  


• Make up a genealogy definition for your family (like a dictionary definition): Killian (kill-ee-ann) 1. A family with roots in Bukowina, Poland. 2. Descendants of Michael Killian (1803-1871). 3. One heck of a great family!

Summer goes by quickly so get busy! Create that art work and those unique family reunion t-shirts. Leave a comment and let me know what other design ideas you come up with!