Large families can overwhelm gift buyers at holiday time. Make shopping easy! Stress less by personalizing a gift that works for any family member. Promotional mugs at minespress.com make great stocking stuffers — and you can turn them into larger gifts by packaging them with gourmet hot cocoa mix, chocolate covered espresso beans or (depending on the recipient and your budget) a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream to liven up nighttime lattes.
We explored the Minespress website, wrote a summary of how it works, and came away with some gift-giving ideas for our readers.
How to Make Minepress Mugs for the Holidays
It’s cheapest to order any custom printed product in bulk. This means that instead of ordering a specific mug for Grandma, a specific one for Uncle Bob and so forth, you’ll choose one design that would work for any family member. That way, each mug will only cost a few dollars when other expenses are figured in. If you want to take care of both sides of the family, you might need to make two orders. If both families have the same initial (like the Hansons and the Herbsts), then lucky you, you can order for everybody at once!
What sorts of designs would work? Minespress mugs are often used by corporations wanting their logos to “pop” against bright white, black or colorful glazes. Follow their example and choose an image that includes just one or two colors. Fool around online and you’ll come up with something ideal! My favorite two options are:
1. Download free fonts.A few longstanding websites like 1001freefonts.com and fontspace.com offer 100% free fonts. You’ll see storybook fonts, famous brand fonts like Star Wars and Starbucks, elegant cursive fonts, stencil fonts and more. You can quickly install these new fonts to your computer by dragging downloaded font files to your Fonts folder. The folder is in your Control Panel.
Within seconds, the new fonts are ready to use in Paint and other programs! Experiment with different colors and text sizes to decorate your family mugs. Use your surname or make a family initial in the largest size possible. You can upload JPEG, PDF, TIFF, EPS, PSD, AI and INDD files for Minespress printing.
2. Use logo generators.Why use a logo generator for a family mug? First, it can be fun to imagine your family as a company! Second, logo generators make creating artwork incredibly easy. Use the logo generators that are provided at free sites like logomaker.com. Literally no special design skills are needed.
Some other mug design ideas include uploading your family’s crest or snagging an image of a letter from Google. For instance, if your last name is Hardin, search for “letter H” in Google Images.
My cousin Kristen, a cat lover, took this idea a step further. She ordered two dozen ceramic soup bowls from Minespress (available in the mugs section) and had them printed up with “Hardin’s Kittycat Café” for every cousin with a cat! Glazed in red and white like checkered café tablecloths, they look pretty cute in her kitchen.
What ideas do you have for “bulk yet custom” gift mugs? We’d love to hear from you!