Custom Birthday Gifts Made From A Photo

By the time somebody is thirty they have received every candle, every gift card and every nice bottle of something. Not because those are bad presents, but because everyone arrives at the same shortlist independently.

A photograph printed on something they can hold breaks that, for a structural reason rather than a sentimental one. Everything else on the table was manufactured in quantity. A picture of one specific dog, or one specific night out, exists once.

Two birthday gifts wearing the same coat

The sincere one is a photograph of somebody they love, or an animal they lost, and it gets kept for years. The ridiculous one is a life size printed face of their own head, and it gets filmed and put on the internet within a minute.

Both are ordered constantly. Decide which one you are buying before you pick the photo, because the photo is different in each case.

Everything is printed to order, so there is no minimum, no bulk tier and nothing to reach. One costs the same per piece whether you order one or six.

A milestone, marked properly

Eighteen, twenty one, thirty, fifty. The birthdays where people gather and somebody makes a speech are the ones where a physical object gets remembered. A collage of nine photographs covering the years works better here than a single image, because it gives the room something to stand around and point at.

A child's birthday

Their own drawing, cut to the shape they drew, wobbly lines and all. Children hand over drawings constantly and they go on a fridge and then in a drawer. Printed at 40 or 60 cm and sewn, the same drawing becomes the thing they take to bed.

The pet, for someone who lives alone

Cut to the animal's outline rather than left as a square, so it reads as the dog rather than as a cushion with a dog on it. This is the most ordered birthday gift here and it is not close.

A partner who lives somewhere else

At full length, printed close to life size, it stops being decorative and becomes something to sleep against. A different kind of birthday present, and the one people are most nervous about ordering and most pleased with afterwards.

A first birthday

Usually bought by a grandparent, usually a photograph of the baby, and usually the only gift from that birthday still in the house a decade later.

Birthdays get remembered later than Christmas does, so here is the arithmetic rather than a countdown banner.

Production takes three days, counted from when you approve the preview rather than from when you order. Approving usually happens the same day. Shipping is added after that and depends entirely on where it is going.

• About two weeks ahead is comfortable for anywhere
• Inside a week it usually still lands, but you are trusting the courier rather than us
• Already too late? Order it anyway. A present that was clearly made for somebody does not expire on the day

Send it straight to them

Put their address in at checkout instead of yours. For anyone posting across a country this removes a second leg of postage and several days, and it is how most long distance birthday orders go out.

Giving it in person

A die cut shape is difficult to disguise in wrapping paper, which is either a problem or the entire point depending on the gift. If you want the shape to be a surprise, a plain box solves it. If you want people guessing across the room for twenty minutes, wrap it as it is and let the outline do the work.

For the joke version, hand it over last. It ends whatever else was being opened, and everybody in the room reaches for a phone. That is the reaction you paid for, and it does not happen if it is opened third.

If several people are chipping in

There is no bulk discount to chase, which makes splitting the cost simple. One person orders, everyone sends their share, and the photograph can come from whoever has the best one rather than whoever is paying.

The photo decides most of the result and choosing it well takes about two minutes.

Send the original from the camera roll. Not a screenshot, not something forwarded through a messaging app, not an image saved from social media. Every one of those steps compresses the file and throws away detail that cannot be put back. On a small cushion you may not notice. At 60 cm you will.

Daylight beats a ceiling light. For an animal, crouch until the camera is level with their eyes, because photographs taken from standing height enlarge the nose and shrink the head.

If you are stealing the photo

Which is most people buying a surprise. Ask a sibling, a partner or a parent rather than pulling something from a profile picture, because profile pictures have been compressed twice before you get to them. A photo sent directly from someone's phone is almost always the better file.

If the only picture you have is genuinely poor, we tell you in the preview before you pay rather than after it is printed.

Same printing, four quite different objects, and the choice changes the reaction more than the photograph does.

• Cut to an outline. The shape follows the subject instead of being a square. This is what makes it read as the person or the animal, and it is the version that gets a reaction.
• Square cushion. Calmer, sits on a sofa without explaining itself, and holds a collage better than a cut shape can.
• Full length. 150 cm, close to life size, for somebody who misses a specific person.
• A drawing. Cut to whatever a child drew, which is the version parents order twice.

Size changes the joke

A face at 20 cm is sweet. The same face at 60 cm is a different gift entirely, and the difference between the two is about the price of a round of drinks. If the reaction is the point, go bigger than feels sensible.

The reverse is true for anything sincere. A photograph of a grandparent at 60 cm dominates a room. At 40 cm it sits on a chair and gets used.

The back is free

Every format prints on both sides at no extra cost, so a second photograph on the back costs nothing. People forget this and then wish they had used it. A pair of photographs from the same night, or the same person twenty years apart, turns one object into two gifts.

This page is about the occasion. If you know who it is for, these go into more detail.

• Custom gifts for him, for a father, brother or friend
• Custom gifts for her, and what tends to get kept rather than stored
• Custom boyfriend gifts and custom girlfriend gifts, for a partner rather than a friend
• Custom pet pillows, if the birthday present is really about their dog
• Custom photo pillows, including how a nine photo collage is laid out
• Custom pillows, every shape and size we print, side by side