Looking for the Perfect Christmas Gift for him or for her? Go beyond just adding their name to something and be really creative. Use our 5 Pecage steps to produce a personalised handmade picture that will make the perfect Christmas gift for him or for her.
What is a Personalised Perfect Christmas Gift?
Most personalised gift offerings just add a name to an existing product, for example, but if you really want to find the perfect Christmas gift idea for someone really important to you then you have to think on another level to create something that reflects deep thought and attention.
If you really want to impress you have to be more creative and think of a personalised Christmas gift idea that no-one else will have thought of. It should convey love, attention and consideration and then it will spark a strong positive emotional reaction in the lucky person receiving their perfect present. It should not be mass produced or a readily available commodity but original, individual and unique. This is why we have created Pecage just in time for Christmas to help your own creative juices do their work.
Simply, Pecage stands for Personalised Elemental Creation (…age is an arty sort of word ending!) and it offers multiple elements that can be personalised in your picture to produce the perfect Christmas gift or a gift for any other occasion such as Birthdays, Anniversaries and beyond. You might choose to just use a few elements or you could go the whole hog!
I am assuming that the person you are choosing the Christmas gift for is very close to you and that you really need to find something that sincerely shows them how you feel. In all honesty the perfect personalised gift is one that makes both you and the recipient as happy as possible and you will not feel this emotional tie with someone you don’t love very much.
How do I become creative with my personalised Christmas gifts?
To start with; rather than think what you would like to buy you need to think about what they would like to receive. Being creative is not that difficult when you have a set of guidelines to help as we outline below. And don’t worry you don’t have to make anything, we can do all that for you, all you need to do is come up with some creative ideas, using our help, to produce that perfect personalised Christmas gift for him or her.
So forget about spending hours browsing shops this Christmas looking for that perfect gift that you know is not there. I appreciate a lot of people like shopping but nothing is more stressful and frustrating than spending hours looking and finding nothing.
We have all done it, I know I have, spent hours on end and lots of shoe leather traipsing around the shops desperately hoping something is going to jump out at me and shout ‘Perfect Christmas Present’!
It ain’t going to happen. OK you might get lucky but how long is it going to take and there is still no guarantee you will be successful and what do you do then because the special day is approaching? Do you go to another town? Go Online? Ask them what they want?!
No. What you need is a reliable plan.
Not the final idea of course but a reliable set of guidelines to help you completely nail the absolutely perfect personalised Pecage gift for him or her.
Why 5 Secrets of finding the perfect Christmas gift?
Well, when I thought about it, there are five key things to consider when creating the idea for the perfect personalised Christmas gift. What is important though is that you need to know the recipient well, have inside knowledge or at least be able to get it, have had mutual experiences perhaps or at a stretch can ask subtle questions about what they like without alerting their suspicions.
Clearly this process will require thought, care, effort, knowledge and love.
Pecage Secret#1 – Interests
Sounds obvious I guess but most people have at least one key area of interest that is often very close to their hearts.
This interest might be an animal like their pet dog or cat. People become very attached to their pets and if, say they have a Labrador, they love Labrador stuff. This might be particularly appropriate for slightly older friends or relatives but with the trend in toy or small dogs nowadays, for example, people are becoming fanatical about their little pooch and this will lead to considerable interest in anything related to that specific breed.
Or maybe it’s horses for example if they like riding. What about their car or a favourite sport? They might be mad supporters of football or rugby or something else or members of a club for something specific.
They might be enthusiastic cyclists, motor bikers, caravanners or sailors for example. They might walk for pleasure, run, do marathons, triathlons, go to the gym, play tennis,
I can’t list everything of course, but hopefully you get where I am going with this. Basically you will need to get inside the options for the perfect present for your friends or family. Try and focus on a key interest, rather than a ‘sort of’ interest as this will have more impact.
Pecage Secret#2 – Memories & Experiences
Since running Gecko Designs I have become awakened to just how much impact memories and experiences have on people’s happiness across the age range. For your older relative, have there been stories of cherished memories and experiences? Perhaps they have children who now live away and they don’t see them as often as they would like. Maybe they met at a concert in the 60s and stayed in a VW Camper van on their honeymoon. Anything like that is great fuel for your perfect present workshop.
With younger people though experiences and shared experiences are very powerful images that warrant serious inclusion in the perfect gift thought process. Today life is driven by achievement whether that is having a first child, running a marathon together, the wedding day, going up in a hot air balloon or even buying their first house. These achievements are solid experiences that mean a lot to the person or people involved and are typical ideas that need to be put into the perfect gift melting pot.
Pecage Secret#3 – Preferences
If this person is your Mum or Dad, for example, you will know all this stuff as you will have been brought up with it but if it is for your Grandparents you might want to ask your parents for some sort of advice about their parents preferences.
Visiting someone’s home is a good way to get ideas for memories and experiences too. Look for photos or pictures that can give you some indications.
Pecage Secret#4 – Locations
This is an often forgotten secret pecage element to nailing the perfect gift. All you have discovered about memories and experiences above had to happen somewhere. It could be that the person you are planning the present for was born in Cape Town, South Africa, or Sherborne in Dorset. They might have had a memorable holiday with the ‘Girls’ or ‘Lads’ in Ibiza perhaps. They might have taken a year out and travelled around Asia or Australia.
Their most important memory might have been going to and graduating from University, but which one? They might have cycled from Lands’ End to John O’Groats, bungee jumped off a bridge in New Zealand, or run the New York Marathon.
When you think about it everything has to happen SOMEWHERE, and that ‘somewhere’ becomes very important to people and the location becomes a massive part of the visualisation of any memory or experience.
Nearly all the personalised and customised Pecage gifts we create for people have some indication of location, mostly using maps but sometimes words and often the picture image portrays a location too. So don’t forget this crucial pecage element of finding the perfect gift for someone.
Pecage Secret#5 – Unique, Individual & Original
This is where you start to put it all together and your Pecage creation becomes the final product but the main aim is to make sure that your gift is Unique, Individual and Original. You might be thinking how the hell can I do that? But never fear there is a way you can create the perfect present and someone can make it for you.
What you need to do now is to bring together all the information you have assembled above, look at the options available and you could be giving a handmade, One-off or limited edition, attractive and extremely poignant gift to your loved one or close friend for their special day.
This is where you have to become a little creative so to help you out I will give you some real examples of actual commissions our customers have asked for to enable them to give that perfect gift.
Examples of actual Personalised Pecage Gifts we have helped our customers create
Josie has five people in her family.
Her, her partner and three children. She also loves elephants and likes the colour red. This was a gift for herself and her partner to decorate their home so she knew what she wanted. At the time we only had designs for 2, 3 and 4 elephants so we created this one to signify the Family of 5 just for her. However, there are more families of five people out there and we have put this unique design on our website.
A couple had a close family friend.
All of them were into skiing and their friend was famous within their group of skiing buddies for skiing down a mountain wrapped in a Union Jack. His birthday was in a few days and they were struggling to decide what to get him as a present. They saw our skier cut out and our Union Jack fabric and their perfect gift search was over.
Honeymoon Memories
This isn’t the actual picture we created but Ben and Amy had their honeymoon in Egypt and their most memorable experience was flying in a Hot Air Balloon over the resort of Hurghada by the Red Sea. So we took our exclusive Hot Air Balloon cut out and put a map of the area they flew over behind it. They asked us to put it in their choice of solid wood antique pine frame. Example of shared experience, memories and location.
Jenny’s father was going to attempt the famous Dragon Devil cycle ride in Wales.
An enormous challenge with more than 6 massive climbs. This is an annual event and one that mad cyclists fight to get accepted to take part in. She asked us to use one of our Bicycle cut outs and use maps to signify important segments of the ride. This was the perfect gift for her Dad.
John was visiting an old friend in France.
This old friend had once owned a Mark 1 Ford Capri that had been a lasting memory for him and all their friends. John put together the two key items, Ford Capri Mk1 and France and so we created a cut out design of a Mk1 Capri and put a French Flag behind it. Delighted.
Missing the Children
It was coming up to last Christmas and a lady came to our stall wondering if we could help. She was one of three children all grown up and living away. In some cases a long way away like New Zealand. She wanted a creative gift for her mother for Christmas that would mean something very special to her. We took our triple heart cut out and put maps of the current locations of each of the three siblings behind them. The old lady was delighted.
An old sailor was retiring and having a presentation at the sailing club.
His daughter came to us, saw our single Yacht cut out and had an idea. Could we take some fabrics that she had at home, that had special meaning to her father, and make a picture for the presentation? Well we would give it a go. It took some work getting the fabrics in the right place but she was delighted and straightaway asked us to do another using the left over fabric. Gave us a tip both times. Very Nice!
These are just some examples of how to take your hard creative work and come up with an idea for the perfect personalised gift. In a lot of cases we might be one jump ahead of you. Based on customer feedback and sales we have identified 3-4 fabric choices for each of our designs that are most popular. This does not mean that your perfect picture is not unique because the fabric placement within the picture is never the same twice.
But this does not take away your ability to make your own choices so you always have access to our wide fabric swatches and of course for that absolutely personal picture you can send us your own fabric. Clearly any map based perfect gifts are also unique to you.
So by following the 5 personalisation tips above you should now have an idea distilled in your head of colours, locations, designs etc and anything that will make it special. We take your own creativity, add some of our magic and then we put it all together for you to produce a truly personal picture that will make the perfect gift.
This is the way to do it:
- Choose the cut out design from our online shop that will match your ideas – or contact us for new options
- Select your choice of size (if available) and select your frame preference from the dropdowns
- Select your choice of popular fabric – or select the ‘Custom’ option and then
- Select from our wider swatch of available fabrics – or
- Send us your own fabric
- Make a map choice if this is part of the design (we will be in touch directly to confirm the exact locations)
- For all custom choices complete ‘order notes’ at checkout and we will contact you
- All online prices include delivery.
- Pay via Paypal, Debit or Credit Card
- Then it’s over to us
So go to our online shop – Gecko Designs Shop – and get started. Need some more reassurance – have a look at what our delighted customers say.
Please don’t forget to tell everyone you know how easy this is. Use our sharing options to tell everyone you know. We do run competitions and offer seasonal discounts so everyone can benefit from knowing a little more about Gecko Designs.
Thanks for reading and happy gift creating
Tim R Floyd
Gecko Designs / #pecage