Having found myself recently unemployed, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. So I’ve been putting those hands to work producing more handmade gifts for friends in exchange for both money and thanks. Many have involved my trusty Cricut but others are more, well, hands-on like a small commissioned cross-stitch ornament I’ll be working on this week. I’d be happy to put these hands to work on your custom, commissioned gifts as well!
To touch on it quickly since I want to focus on the crafts, my contract with Snow Consulting was ended, so I’m no longer managing any of those affiliate programs or working with that team. I hit the job search hard and have some irons in the fire but no guaranteed offer as of today. So in addition to doing lots of back laundry, making Dominic’s lunch for him to take to work, and watching countless episodes of Law & Order, I’ve been heavily pushing my handmade gifts.
For Money
HUGE shout out to Liz Fogg of TravelWithLiz.org! She is a pageant queen, runDisney fanatic, and recently officially became a Disney travel agent. She ran the Tinker Bell Half Marathon, completing her Coast to Coast runDisney challenge with her pageant sisters, and commissioned adorable wine tumblers as gifts. At the last minute, I also whipped up some iron-on designs for her running outfits, printed logo and URL iron-ons, a printed vinyl decal of her son’s website for his computer, and some Mickey marathon distance decals. Liz is also in marketing, so she gave me her blessing to go ahead and sell the designs I made for her running shirts and I was already going to sell the distance decals. They’re all available at TrishaLyn.Storenvy.com.
Creating those iron-on decals for Liz got my creative juices going, and I created some more designs that are not yet available – but will be once I cut them from the final heat transfer vinyl and apply them. No, I’m not using precious HTV in the hopes I’ll get an order, but I actually did pre-sell a decal after showing my friend the design! Score! I am trying to move away from Etsy due to the listing fees – they’re not much, but I’d rather pay the 2.7% credit card processing fee once I sell an item through Storenvy than perpetually continue to pay a listing fee for an item that’s not selling. There’s more room to try things out when I don’t have to front the dough to list something.
I was able to flex my custom commission skills further when I was commissioned by my friend Veronica to make a charm bracelet as a gift for her mom’s birthday, which was the day before Mother’s Day. She came over for a consultation and I showed her what kinds of charms I had available, talked to her about what kinds of things her mom liked, and then went with her to Walmart to pick out some Mother & Daughter charms to include. I did a lot of custom wire bending for the colored accent beads and she really loved it!
My dad also roped me into really stretching what I was comfortable doing and transforming some generic freezable drink coolers into New York Giants drink coolers worthy of his best buddy’s fanatic Man Cave! He had already commissioned from me a cheese plate so this but this was a larger undertaking since I’d never worked with these drink coolers before. I think they turned out great and having now seen his friend’s man cave for myself, they’ll fit right in!
For Thanks
I also flexed my creative muscle to make some other things as gifts. Veronica RARELY does anything for her birthday, but this year something about finally working a job with regular office hours and turning 35 on a Friday inspired her to get everyone together for dinner at Simply Fondue. Being strapped for cash and preparing for a $75 dinner between the fondue feast and drinks, I wanted to make her something personal. She loves ladybugs and has admired the personalized things I’ve made before, so I bought a red planter tin and used vinyl to personalize it for her. The picture doesn’t do it justice but the ladybugs tumble around the bucket, changing orientation.
Again, not having much to work with, I skipped our usual gift of an Olive Garden gift card for my mother-in-law Michelle’s Mother’s Day gift and decided to go personal again and made her this Love My Tribe decal. I got the design as a freebie for personal use and with 12 kids + 3 daughter-in-laws + 1 son-in-law + 6 grandchildren with 1 more coming, she often refers to everyone as “The Tribe”. I knew she had a stick figure army of kids on her mega van’s back window, so I made her this decal to go with it. Personally, I’d have put it at the end of the line but it’s her van & her decal to place as she likes!
Finally, my friend Nikki is crazy into the Hamilton: An American Musical soundtrack and wanted a decal of the logo for her phone case, so I was happy to oblige! I was impressed that even the tiny pointing finger came out well without snagging while the Cricut did it’s job!
For Hire!
There’s more in the hopper and I can do more! By some stroke of luck, I even sold a set of wine charms! The whole point of this is that I am available to make anything in my shop at TrishaLyn.Storenvy.com and lots of custom commissions too! Anything from vinyl decals, small cross stitch ornaments, etched glass, photo gifts, phone cases, jewelry, and more! You can browse my Handmade Gifts photo galleries to see the kinds of things I’ve made in the past and reach out and contact me with your idea!
What handmade gifts can I make for you?
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