Cafe Press Review: Custom Tote Bags, Ornaments, & Water Bottles!

Disclosure: This is a product review post, complimentary products were provided.  The following relates my own personal experience and opinions about CafePress and may differ from others who try their service and products.

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you are probably aware that I love to be able to personalize anything and everything.  As you can imagine, I was very excited when I recently tot to work with CafePress, where it's super easy to design your own gifts!

They have an adorable collection of  baby hats, that you can add all sorts of cute sayings and images to.  They'd make a great shower gift or be perfect to take along to give to the baby when you meet him or her for the first time.

They also have a wide selection of coffee travel mugs.  My husband is notoriously hard to buy for, but there are some really cool designs in the Science Rules category that would be perfect for him. I really like the variety and unique choices there are.

CafePress very generously provided me with a gift card so I could design my own gifts.  I knew just what I wanted to get and am really pleased by how everything turned out.

The personalized tote bags are normally $18 but are currently on sale for just $10!  I have done enough price comparison to know that is a great bargain, especially since you can customize your bag on both sides!

As far as I'm concerned you can never have too many of these handy bags.  They are perfect for quick grocery shopping, taking to the farmer's market or library, or for bringing a small project to work on out and about.

I made this bag for my mom, who's Grammy to the kids.  We used it as the gift bag for her birthday present last month.   It's great how it was our wrapping and part of the gift.  She loved the photo of the kids and the personalized message.  I really liked how easy it was to change the font and color to match my project and I was even able to use a floral digital image from one of my scrapbook kits to add to the front.

We went on vacation in June and while in a museum shop my daughter wanted to an ornament.  It was kind of cheap looking and overpriced.  I knew I could make a much better one so we passed.  When I saw the selection of personalized ornaments at CafePress I had found what I was looking for.  Ours is printed on aluminum and is just beautiful.  We have an active little guy so another plus is, it's harder for him to break.  I love it so much, that it's now my favorite out of our custom photo ornaments ever!   

These are also currently on sale, for $8 instead of $12.50, so now is the time to make a bunch for the holidays!  Mine was made using the Brush Splat photo theme.  I thought the colors went nicely with my daughter's bright sweatshirt and gave it a fun and youthful look.  This theme also leaves room to add some text, perfect for making it our yearly ornament.

While I started with a theme from CafePress, you can build your own design using their graphics or your own and get a completely customized look.  Isn't that great, now you don't have to look for the perfect ornament, you can make it yourself for anyone.  I was thinking that this be perfect for teacher's gifts.  Add his or her last name and it's an inexpensive yet very thoughtful present. 

The third gift I created was for my daughter's birthday last month.  She'd seen my photo mugs and since she doesn't need a mug, she really a bottle with her own picture or name on it.  It was so easy to make one up using the water bottle designer and since I could add whatever I wanted I could include both!  She was thrilled and now I'm pretty sure I need one of my own for Christmas.

This was my first time using CafePress and I was really pleased by the variety of products - so many it was a little overwhelming at first!  It was just awesome to have so much control over the design, with the phrases and images available and the ability to upload your own, you truly can get exactly what you want.  I didn't realize a service like CafePress was out there, or just exactly how great it is and am so glad I got introduced to them through this review.  I highly recommend checking them out!  I'm already thinking of all the hard to buy for people on my gift list, cause now I know exactly where to go when shopping for them!