house of swag

I have always had an affinity for custom made merch. Especially of the family variety. It must be in my blood. We had matching family t-shirts in the 70s (baseball style—white with green sleeves) that had the iron-on words "Karol Klan." Awesome. I realize now the clan spelling with a K was probably not the wisest decision. It was meant to be a play on our last name—an alliteration type thing—not an association with, you know, The Klan. Double awesome. This was all my dad's doing, who loved labeling things. By things, I mean everything, like our t-shirts. We had a tape label maker that was used constantly, especially on cassette tapes. It was the kind with the red or black tape and the type would emboss in white. I can't find any online right now to show. Now I want one. (Grammie, do we still have our label maker and did we keep any of the t-shirts? And was it really Klan with a K?)

So, I wish I could say this is the first mug I have had made with our child's photo on it, but it's not. It's not even the second. Or the third. Pete isn't as enamored of these as I am. He likes them fine but he doesn't immediately think "That picture of Liddy with the cheerio stuck to her face with snot is so gross and cute, let's make that into a mug!" the way I do. I need to remind him that his own Pete-doing-kung-fu mug I made for him 12 years ago is a prize prize possession of his now. There is something truly funny and crazy about using a mug with your own photo on it. Now I want family pencils. I'm the only Karol in our immediate family, the girls have Pete's last name, so I will have to think about the wording. Blair, didn't you make custom pencils awhile back, or was it your genius husband? I am link lazy.

I made the mug here. I just clicked on the site directly from flickr to add the photo. Super easy.