Best Christmas Gifts - Add Your Personal Touch

The best Christmas gifts are those that have your personal touch. Personalized Christmas gifts are meaningful because -

• They let you share a part of your life with your family and friends.
• They are a labor of love that involves time and effort.
• They are unique because you created them specially for those you love.

Plus, personalized Christmas gifts are fun to make, and puts you in the spirit of Christmas.

For all these reasons and more, presents with your added personal touch make the best Christmas gifts.

One of the easiest ways to create a personalized Christmas gift is through Zazzle. Zazzle allows you download your own pictures, or art, and print them onto a variety of gift objects including t-shirts, mugs, stamps, calendars, aprons, prints, pet clothing, key-chains, skateboards, bumper stickers, and much more.

The simplest way to create your personalized Christmas gift is by using Zazzle templates.

1. Go to the Zazzle website.
2. Create an account on Zazzle. This is a very painless process where you only have to enter in a username, password, and your e-mail.
3. At the top of any Zazzle screen there should be a search panel. Enter in "templates" and click on the Search button.
4. This will give you a set of gifts where you can easily add your own images and art. Click on the gift of your choice.
5. This puts you in the product design screen. On the right column, there should be a Personalize it section. Click on the Change link to add your own image.
6. You will get a pop-up menu that allows you to select and download images from your local computer. Once you have selected the photo or image that you want click on the OK button at the bottom right.
   
7. Your new image should appear on the product preview to the left.
   

And just like that, you are done!

Click on Add to Cart button, and your new personalized Christmas gift will be added to your shopping cart.

I joined Zazzle a while ago, but I only recently got back into it to create some Christmas gifts for my friends and family. Since my dogs are a big part of my life, I created my gifts based on them.

Some of the personalized gifts I created include -

• Calendars - Calendars make great personalized Christmas gifts because very soon after Christmas, it will be the new year and time to get a new calendar. Not only is a calendar something that is useful all year round, but it also lets your friends and family enjoy your virtual presence for the whole year.
• Greeting Cards - Greeting cards are a mainstay of the Christmas season. If you are going to send a card to wish your loved ones a happy holiday, why not make it a personalized card? This will also give them a visual update on you and what you are up to.
• T-shirts - Like calendars, t-shirts are useful and can be worn all year round. Just make sure that your designs are simple and not too cluttered.
  
• Stamps and Labels - You can also create your own stamps and labels to completely personalize your entire Christmas gift giving process.

Below are some of the pictures I used for my Siberian Husky calendar.

Here are some things to look out for when creating your personalized Christmas art or images -

• To eget a high quality print, you want to ensure that your image size match the specifications required by your personalized gift. To help you with this, there are a variety of image Guide Files that you may download. Use the Guide File as a starting point to create your Christmas gift art.
• Make sure that you do not include anything important around the edges of your images. These may get clipped during the product creation process. For example, part of my calendar images got clipped as a result of the calendar binding. If you look at the calendar images above, you will see that the important parts of the picture (i.e., my dogs) are away from the edges.
  
• Note that on light colored t-shirts, the white areas of your image will appear as transparent. If you do not want this to happen, then print your image on a purely white or dark colored shirt.

If you have other questions about the gift creation process, please post them in the comments section below.

There are always many deals going on at Zazzle so make sure you enter in all the relevant coupon codes and save as much as you can on your personalized Christmas gifts.

In addition to the regular Zazzle coupon codes which are usually shown on the front-page, there is also a special Emmaandpete3 code that gets you 10% off all orders of $50 or more. There is not expiration date on this code.

So what are you waiting for? Get on over to Zazzle and have some fun creating your own personalized Christmas gifts.

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