Whenever we’ve been all creative, designing lovely new personalised gifts (or had a lovely designer create a lovely new design for us) we always have to make a test one, to make sure it prints correctly, the colour resolution is ok, size, it personalises well and that it, well, generally looks tip-top (not the tinned cream of our childhood… who remembers that? My Great Grandma used to have that in her tea. **Shudders***).
We just love that feeling of anticipation, waiting for the item to come off the printer, engraving machine or out of the heat press. Nailbiting stuff. Not even joking! You can never be sure til the first one is done.
Sometimes things just don’t look right and it’s back to the drawng board. Sometimes things look just as you’d expect, and that’s nice. And sometimes items just come out and blows you away. The colours are even bolder, the shape is just perfect, and you find yourself an hour later just wandering, still grinning like a fool! And them’s what it’s all about.
That feeling when it. Just. Looks. Amazing. is the best! We can’t get enough of it!
And because all our gifts are personalised, when we do a test, we always try use one of our friends’ names on it, thinking “Ooooh, we’ll give that to them - they’ll like it!”. And invariably, of course, they do. However, our friends & family won’t be shopping with us unfortunately – they already have one of everything!
But there’s only so much we can give out. Only so much wall space and cupboard space in our friends’ homes. And only so many times we can use the same names on test products as successful products are then photographed for the website if it’s a new design. Long story short, we have a fair amount of our own gifts at home!
Mugs!
We have more personalised mugs with other people’s names on than the Devil has Prada shoes. Our cupboard is bulging. We’re now in a “stacking situation”. We bring them home because they’re lovely designs, and they’re in good condition. Tea just tastes good in them.
The problem is, of course, not the new mugs, but the tatty, half faded, chipped & tannin stained mugs that we refuse to let go of.
Why?!?
Because mugs are so meaningful to us. They’re a part of our fabric. We have a lot of personalised ones given to us, or that we’ve given to each other, in the past, as well as lots of mugs that, whilst not personalised, are indeed personal. They’ve been bought specifically with us in mind.
Thought, care, and a certain amount of love has gone into buying them. That “Ah!!! That’s SO Marc! He’ll LOVE that!” moment you have when you’re looking for a birthday / anniversary / work leaving present and you stumble across the very thing you were after all along.
And they’re hard to let go of.
But why are they so meaningful? Is it a global thing or a very British thing? Is it our very British connection with our tea?
I’m sure it’s not just me that thinks tea tastes better in the right mug? Especially when that mug was chosen for me, with love. Just looking at that mug brings a smile to your face. Then when you take a sip of that hot steamy dream and lose yourself in a gigantic tea-hug, it’s compounded. Double hug!
Anything that’s shared, nay, created THAT much enjoyment is not going to be easy to just throw away. You form a bond. It’s you and your tea drinking receptacle against the world. For that moment anyway.
And that’s why personalised mugs make such a great gift. That’s my theory anyway
--- M x ---
---Postscript---
Of course we’ve got quite a few personalised mugs on this here site. It’d be great if you took a peek, see if our designers have made anything you love.
A couple of our particular favourites are our Boarding Pass Travel Buddies Mug, our matching Mr & Mrs (or Mr & Mr / Mrs & Mrs) mugs and our Create your own playlist mug. We hope you like them too!