I have hundreds of different designs on my website, but I still get calls and emails about custom work. Maybe you’re celebrating a 50th anniversary or having a graduation party and you can’t find anything specifically for those events. (Did you know that you can change the wording on any of our designs? If you see one that you like, just specify your own text at checkout or contact us with any special details!) Or maybe you’re looking for a particular design that I just haven’t gotten around to making yet!

That’s what happened a few weeks ago when Tammy G. ordered some favors. She is moving with her family to Vermont and wanted a gift to give to her special friends to invite them to her new home. She chose “Chocolate Moose” lip balm, and wanted a special moose design to match. Could we make her a favor for her unique theme? You bet!

I’ll admit, I haven’t always done all of the drawings and photos for my designs. Some of them are copyright- or royalty-free graphics or photos, and some of them are fonts. Some of them are even illustrated by my daughter (she made the kid illustrations on our foot rub, tummy rub, and chest rub!). But many of the designs do incorporate my own drawings and photos. Some of the time I start drawing on my computer, but for this moose design I did some freehand pen sketches. These gave me the rough shapes to work with. You can see from the scan below that they aren’t even complete drawings—often they’re just parts. And pretty silly-looking parts, at that:Once I have a starting place, I scan the drawings into my computer and start playing with them. I work in Illustrator and turn most of them into vector drawings; this allows me to change the shapes and colors really easily (so if someone wanted a pink moose later, it would be a snap!).

Here’s the first moose I came up with. Once I have a graphic, I try it out by putting together some samples of tags and labels. For this project I tried a few different wordings and layouts. Sometimes I use different fonts. See some examples below:

Tammy chose the tag design and wording that she liked, and also requested some changes to the moose. Here’s the final moose and her decorated favors, ready to share:

While most of our customers find a design on the website that can be personalized for their event, some events (and themes) are just unique! We’d love to talk with you about your unique event! Contact us for more information.