Create Custom Digital Gifts
By: Sandy Berger Source: AARP.org Date Posted: 2006-11-27 10:49:00-05:00
Using your computer and a few online sites, you can easily create unique personalized gifts for the holidays, or any celebration, that are reasonably priced. With some digital photos and journaling or storytelling skills, you can create personalized hardcover books, calendars, aprons and tote bags that can be enjoyed for a lifetime.
If you enjoy recording your cruise or travel adventures with pictures and a diary or travel log, you can use several websites to turn your digital photos and notes into a colorful book to be enjoyed again and again. Perhaps you enjoy cooking and want to assemble a cookbook to share your favorite recipes with friends and family, or have an idea for a colorful storybook. There are several websites that can help you assemble your photos, notes, recipes and stories into colorful formats that you can embellish and personalize on your computer. Later you can publish one or as many books as you wish depending on how many gifts you wish to create.
The creation of your gift book begins at the website of your choice. Select the theme, such as a story book for children, a cookbook, or a photo journal. Then follow their easy directions to download the book template onto your computer. That is where you will cut and paste or insert the digital pictures that will illustrate your book. Each website also offers font options, some of which resemble hand-written notes. You can also select page designs and colors that better reflect your book theme. These various page layouts enable you to choose more or less room for text or photos, and the combinations are up to you.
As you begin to envision your gift book, gather together the photos that will be used for that theme and transcribe any handwritten journals, trip notes or recipes into text documents that allow for easy spell-checking. You can copy and and paste the text into the book-creation software when you're ready to assemble your gift book. The websites I visited have free software templates you can download and try out. You should also compare pricing and the different book size and page layout options each offers.
Another fun idea offered by some of these sites is to create gift calendars. You will only need about a dozen digital pictures and just a little text. Everyone needs a calendar, and friends and family will appreciate one that includes not only the popular holidays but also personalized dates such as birthdays, anniversaries and other memorable days they will want to remember. Many of the custom calendar sites offer optional borders to embellish and frame your photos. Some of these sites also make it possible for you to place your photos onto T-Shirts, aprons and tote bags.
And here's another fun way to use these sites: if you belong to a church, club or hobby group, your organization could assemble photos from club members or favorite recipes of bake sales and create calendars, tote bags or gift books to raise money for your organization.
Whatever the season or reason for gift giving, a personalized gift is always appreciated.
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