After years of regular hand sanitizing, it’s time we all treat ourselves to beautifully made soap that won’t dry out our hands and that smells lovely. Introducing a new line of personalized engraved soaps featuring the quality and design you expect from Gifts in 24.

You’ll love the two tantalizing scent options — Shea Butter or Lavender.

And right now, there are two designs: Family and Classic Monogram. But our collection is ever growing, so stay tuned!

Two Engraved Soap Designs…and Counting

The Classic Monogram is the same one you know and love — always among the most popular monograms on our site. The Family lettering style is the L96 lettering style, another crowd favorite.

Your monogram or name is carefully carved right into the creamy soaps — not too shallowly, and not too deeply. The personalization will hold up even after many uses. Our experienced team has always been killing it behind the printing machines. Now they have mastered these new engraved soaps. And a bonus: the workshop smells ah-mayzing!

Plus, we’ve boxed the soaps beautifully, making them perfect for birthdays, the holidays, house warming presents and host/hostess gifts. You can buy single bars of soap or in sets of three.

Engraved Soap & Guest Towel Gift Sets

For an even bigger statement, you can order a gift set featuring three bars of soap and 25 printed guest towels with matching personalization. Fancy, right?

The next party you host, you can deck out your powder room with this pair. Or maybe your best friends invited you to an end-of-summer weekend party at the lake — fret not, we got you — this is the perfect gift for your hosts.

And as for that hand sanitizer? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, washing with traditional soap and water is more effective at removing certain substances from your hands. Plus, a beautiful ceramic soap dish adds elegance, and won’t clog up the landfills like plastic sanitizer bottles, do.

So there you have it…the ins and outs of our new line of engraved personalized soaps. Enjoy!

When it comes to personalized printed party napkins, it’s nice to have the right amount of choices. Too many, and it’s too hard to make up your mind. Too few, and you can’t make your vision a reality. With our new Printed Napkins & Guest Towels, you have the perfect palette of ink colors and fonts. It’s easy to create personalized napkins that match your party theme or decor.

Here’s your guide to creating the best personalized party napkins for your next event. Here are your best choices for all kinds of occasions.

Dinner Party Napkins

If you love to host small dinner parties with friends, family and work colleagues, here’s your secret weapon: Delavan Monogrammed Printed Napkin. It’s a classic design with your choice of monogram, plus 17 ink color choices. The monogram is printed using a four-color ink process. It’s not foil. It’s not thermography. The ink is flat and matte. If your decor is gold or silver, modern or classic, bright or neutral, you’ll find ink shades and monograms to match.

Wedding Napkins

On the other end of the spectrum, wedding receptions and wedding showers tend to be larger gatherings where the special couple is the focus. The Derby Napkin can be your go-to choice for cocktail hour, with the bride’s and groom’s names elegantly printed in gold ink on crisp white paper. For dinner, choose the coordinating Derby Guest Towel.

Birthday Party Napkins

Our Full-Color Photo Napkin is a natural for birthday parties. Whether the honoree is 1 year old or 100, a full-color photo napkin is the perfect way to mark the occasion. Wouldn’t it be cute to send everyone home with a tiny framed version of the photo as a party favor?

Work Event Napkins

For company picnics, team-building outings, client parties and more, you want to make your company brand stand out. Print your logo with our full-color printing process on triple-ply printed party napkins on our Custom Napkins. You can rest assured that the printing will be crisp, the colors will be true-to-life and vivid. And, the resulting product will be professional and polished.

Anniversary Napkins

Your wedding anniversary will stand out with the Joyous Printed Guest Towel. These dinner-sized napkins offer a choice of 17 ink colors and 10 lettering styles, so you can find a color and look that matches your party decor. And with up to four lines of personalization, you have room to say what you want to say about the happy couple.

Our Printed Napkin & Guest Towel collection includes 54 items to select from, including full color custom logo designs, digital photo options and many of our most popular designs in your choice of 17 ink colors: Black, Blush, Cardinal, Citrus, Emerald, Fuchsia, Gold, Lavender, Navy, Pear, Pumpkin, Purple, Red, Royal, Sky, Slate, and Tropic. With all of these choices, you are sure to find colors and designs that match your vision for your event.

Looking for a go-to gift that’s versatile, easy-to-order, and affordable? We’ve got it! It’s rare to find gifts under $5 that are also high quality and a joy to give…but this one is the trifecta perfecta!

Friends and Family Tablet Sets. Make these your go-to gift. Many of our customers swear by them.

Here’s the concept: Check your calendar for upcoming birthdays for the next few months, give us 8 names, we’ll send the tablets to you by the end of the week, and you can put them in your gift closet until the birthdays roll around. So easy, right?

Easy-to-Order

With one order, you’ll purchase 8 personalized gifts at once. It’s an easy, efficient way to create thoughtful gifts for a group. Think officemates: Add “Samantha” to one tablet, “Grace” to the next, move on to Abigail, Veronica, Madison, Taylor, Sheila and Ann. Press “order” and you’ll receive 8 personalized tablets in 2-5 days (depending on where you live) and they’ll arrive ready for giving.

Your officemates will never know it was so painless for you. All Samantha and the others will see is their own name carefully and beautifully printed on a high-quality note pad in a vivid ink color. They’ll think you worked for days planning, tracking down, and creating this thoughtful gift. Only you will know it took you less than 5 minutes to order and arrived at your door in a matter of days.

Versatility

Same goes for your children’s teachers, kids’ party favors, bridal party gifts, Christmas gifts and more. Just add a name to each of the 8 tablets (Mr. Seymour, Ms. Brown, etc. or Preston, Declan, Aiden, etc.), choose your ink color, and we’ll print them for you in 24 hours and ship them out to you. Voila–thoughtful, attractive gifts under $5!

We offer our classic design, as well as a new Santa Cruz line with a snappy double-border introduced in 2020. Both offer a choice of 10 lettering styles, including our ever-popular Anthony font, and a choice of ink color.

Affordability

Here’s another beautiful thing: At the regular price of $29.95, each tablet works out to $3.75. And if you add another item to get to the $35 free shipping minimum, the picture just keeps getting better and better.

Each tablet is made with our high quality paper. Each sheet is 80 lb text, like nice thick copier paper. There are 100 sheets per tablet. And each sheet is a generous 4.4 inches x 6 inches, so there is plenty of room to write.

So get a jump on your 2021 gift-buying for birthdays, graduations, new homes, and end-of-year teacher gifts. You’ll avoid the mad scramble… and your bank account will thank you!

Family & Friends 8-Tablet Set

Santa Cruz Family & Friends 8-Tablet Set

What is good typography? We can all spot good design in a telephone, car or clothing: You know quality when you see it. It’s the same for personalized stationery. It’s easy to see, but hard to pull off. Modern typography follows a long heritage — back to typesetters who used to place small blocks with letters on them into a printing press. They used rules that are still alive today. So it’s good to know your typesetting terms, so you can know good personalized stationery when you see it.

Our professional designers spend a lot of time getting the look and spacing perfect for each and every letter in all of our exclusive fonts. A name or monogram should have good spacing between the letters, and the style of individual letters should relate to one another. Shop with care: other companies don’t always pay attention to these important rules.

Here is a glossary of typesetting terms to help you understand the ins and outs of good design on personalized stationery.

Vocabulary about Letters

Here are some typesetting terms that related to the shapes of the letters.

Upper Case – A letter that we learned in school as a “capital letter.” Fun fact: Employees in old printshops kept these letters in the upper drawers of their cabinets…hence the name “upper.” We use upper case letters for proper names and the beginnings of sentences.

Lower Case — The small letters we use for most words in a sentence and for names. Often, we use upper case letters in monograms, but not always. Our Elise monogram uses lower case letters. Sometimes it’s fun to break the rules, as in this fun new font on our Luna Card, which features all lower case letters and no upper case ones.

Serif – A tiny embellished notch that appears at the tip of the stroke of a letter. Many serif fonts have a traditional or classic feel. They can also, but not always, feel more formal. Fonts with a serif tend to be easier to read. It’s thought that the little hooks on the ends of the letters help your eye track more quickly from one letter to the next. The font used in this blog is a serif font.

Sans Serif Lettering – A more modern-looking style of lettering that tends to be more plain, clean or simple. One of our most popular sans serif lettering styles is here on our One-Line Note. It has a “Mad Men” feel to it, doesn’t it?

Roman Lettering – A kind of alphabet that features small, decorative serifs at the tips of each letter. The Magnolia Note has a roman lettering style.

Handdrawn Lettering — Some lettering styles mimic handwriting or printing. Our Anthony lettering style is one of these, which is shown below on our Anthony Studio Card. We often have developed lettering styles from real people’s handwriting that we admire. Read this blog about the development of our Sally Script font.

Vocabulary about Spacing

Here are some typesetting terms that related to the spaces between and around letters, words and lines of texts.

Kerning – The distance between letters inside of a word. When letters inside a word touch each other, we describe the kerning as “too tight.” When there is so much space between letters that the words are difficult to distinguish from one another, we say the kerning is “too loose.” We pay enormous attention to the kerning when letters are combined in a name or monogram, as you can see in the photo below. It’s our Circle Monogram on our Henley Grand Monogram Note.

Leading — Pronounced “ledding,” this is the blank space between lines of type. Wedding invitations usually have “open” or “expanded” leading, while the text in books usually has a “tight” (compressed) leading.

Flush Left – The alignment of the left side of all paragraphs is a straight line as you look down the page, such as this one. This is typical for many publications.

Flush Right – The alignment of the text down the right side is a straight line. This paragraph is flush right. It’s a little unusual, and so it catches your eye. Some of our products that use flush right are X and X.

Ragged Left and Ragged Right — “Ragged” means that the beginning or ending of a line-of-type does not line up vertically with the other lines of type. When you format text to be flush left or flush right, the opposite side of the paragraph will be ragged. Most paragraphs on this page flush left and ragged right. But oftentimes, wedding and other formal invitations feature text that is ragged left and right, like this paragraph is. We also call this type of text “centered.” You can see this on our Yorkshire Invitation Card.

Of course, you can depend on all products by Gifts In 24 to feature excellent typographical design. Check out our monogrammed products. Or look at our best-selling folded notes.

When you scour the advice columnists such as Ask Amy or Miss Manners, it seems like one out of every ten questions is a frustrated query from an auntie or grandmother about why the young people in their lives won’t write thank you notes.

It seems to be a widespread problem, and where there’s a problem, there are solutions. If you have young adults in your life who do not express gratitude for the gifts you give them and the things you do for them, then maybe they need some tools. We’ve put together this brief guide to help you.

The Tools of Gratitude

The tools of gratitude are simple and easy to gather: 1. Give them their own stationery. 2. Model for them how to write a proper thank you note.

Giving stationery to member of Generation Z — those who are currently in their late teens or early twenties — may seem counterintuitive: They use their phones for everything right? Snapchat and Instagram and texting are their primary mode of communication. Even email seems hopelessly old-fashioned to the average 20-year-old.

We can all agree that a young person’s first instinct after a birthday party or receiving a beautiful gift in the mail is not to run to the store and buy a package of thank you notes.

So you can do this for them. Create a thank you note toolkit of sorts: a set of beautifully personalized thank you notes, a book of colorful stamps, a smooth-writing pen, and a print-out or digital file of the family addresses they can program into their phone.

Now that young person has the writing tools. We’re almost there…

Go a step further and model for them how to write a thank you note. The rhythm and structure is simple, as you know, being a regular thank you note writer, of course!

Here is collection of blogs we’ve written that explain how easy it is. They cover all the bases, ranging from writing thank you notes for birthdays, weddings, teachers and business occasions. You can send them that link, or you can sit with them in person or over the phone and go over the basics — salutation, name the gift, how you’ll use or enjoy it, hope for a future meeting, close.

Lack of Handwriting Skills?

One barrier you won’t be able to help them with is that many young people may not have learned to properly write in cursive. If they print the thank you note, or render it in a mixture of printing and cursive, who is to judge? Nothing’s perfect in this life, and if it’s the difference between sending a thank you note and not sending one, I’ll take the printed or badly scrawled thank you note any day of the week.

Stationery Choices for Young Adults

Let’s say this first: there is no right or wrong choices for personalized stationery. Some young adults are working in fields, such as the law or the corporate world, where a formal monogram or their name in plain block letters at the top of a folded note would be perfect.

Other young people might love that very same stationery simply for its classic feel. Still others might prefer stationery with a more youthful attitude.

Ultimately, the stationery you choose to give them depends on their personal taste.

You can also simply give them the link to the Gifts In 24 website and let them choose. Good luck and thank you for helping the world be a little kinder and gentler.

When you pour that frothy, fun drink for a guest and hand it over, don’t forget to also give them a cocktail napkin. It may feel like a silly extra, but there are several really important reasons: If it’s a cold drink, the napkin will help insulate their hands. If they decide to put it down on a table, the napkin will help protect the table. If they accidentally dribble the drink on their arm, down their shirt or on your floor, the napkin will be close at hand.

What size is a cocktail napkin?

Why hand them a cocktail napkin and not a dinner napkin, tea towel or other type of napkin? A cocktail napkin is perfectly sized… not too small and not too big. Here at Gifts in 24, our cocktail napkins, when folded, measure 5 inches by 5 inches, or 4.75 inches by 4.75 inches. (Unfolded, they are 20 inches by 20 inches or a little less.) That means they fit in your hand without feeling bulky or bunchy.

Cocktail napkins are typically made from paper, so they are absorbant, but that also makes them more streamlined and stiff. A larger fabric napkin would flop around and feel unwieldly.

How can I personalize cocktail napkins for the occasion?

Another reason to include cocktail napkins at your next party is purely an aesthetic one: a personalized napkin that’s created with your room decor or party theme in mind can really add to the flavor of the event. Our napkins come in 12 paper colors and 14 foil colors. We offer dozens of lettering styles and graphic motifs. You are sure to find a combination that complements — or even heightens — the mood and tone you intend to set with your party.

So if you’re toasting to a newly engaged couple, you can add their names to the napkins. If you’re celebrating a proud Ph.D. student, you can include graduation themed artwork in her school colors. If you’re hubby just turned 50, we’ve got fun birthday motifs for that, too.

When would I use a monogrammed cocktail napkin?

All the time! They’re particularly useful for small gatherings where it wouldn’t make sense to order 100 napkins specifically personalized for the occasion. In other words, keep a stash for impromptu gatherings. Maybe you’ve invited the new neighbors for a quick drink after moving in? Monogrammed napkin! Did you invite your office co-workers, and your boss popped in, too? Did your college roommate call and let you know she’s coming into town Friday and wants you to meet her fiance? Monogrammed napkin! They’re elegant without being snobby, appropriate without being too specific, and eminently affordable. Keep a supply with your partyware and you’ll always feel prepared.

Want to see our beautiful designs? They come in foil-pressed, embossed, monogrammed, and luxury.

February 20 is #LoveYourPetDay. How are you celebrating? Whether you have a cute cat, an adorable dog, a hamster or an iguana, your pet is an important part of your family. They give us so many things: Unconditional love, unlimited entertainment, even a free reason to get outside and go for a walk everyday. Here are three fun and easy ways to celebrate your favorite pooch, kitty or other companion. How will you mark Love Your Pet Day every day of the year?

Photo & Picture Frame

Keeping a sweet picture of your pet on your desk at work helps you generate those endorphins. Your office mates will love the One of the Family Picture Frame. It’s one of several solid wood picture frames we’ve designed with pet-themed artwork, including an engraved or painted name.

Keepsake Ornament

The holiday season is filled with nostalgia and traditions carried from one generation to the next. Decorating a Christmas tree is one such tradition. The Pawsitively Yours Printed Keepsake Ornament reflects the love you have for your pet.

Photo Agenda

It takes just minutes to upload a full-color photo of your precious pet, and write a few lines of personalized text for a personalized notepad, such as the Family Photo Agenda. Choose an exclusive lettering style and matte ink color. We’ll do the rest. In no time, you can find a place for these agenda sheets in their CrystalClear acrylic holder on your desk, on your kitchen counter, or on your bedside table.

So there you have it. Three easy and fun ways to celebrate #LoveYourPetDay every day of the year. Order today, the item will ship tomorrow, fast and free through FedEx Ground Shipping. When you give Tiny that can of tuna or new collar, be sure to give yourself something a little special too.

What is the etiquette for acknowledging sympathy? In the aftermath of the loss of a loved one, there is a lot to do: gather belongings; plan a funeral, burial or other memorial; settle the estate; attend to health bills and other paperwork; and most of all….grieve. Others around you may express kindness and sympathy toward you. These outpourings of love and concern — through sending flowers, attending a service, mailing sympathy cards and other acts of kindness — may help soften the grief a bit. What are the best ways to respond to these tender outpourings of solidarity and love? Here are the Dos and Don’ts for writing sympathy thank you notes.

Do keep track of who sent what

If someone sent flowers, write a description of them on the accompanying card and keep those in a centralized location — even a shoebox or paper bag will do — so you don’t lose track of them in the whirl of paperwork. In the same way, place sympathy cards, inside their envelopes with the return address, in a similar receptacle. If you like, write on the envelopes whether there is an extensive, personal letter that should be responded to later.

Don’t feel obliged to respond right away

Give yourself time to grieve. You can respond in several weeks or months.

Do order pre-printed cards if you need to respond to many people

If the sympathy notes are pouring in by the dozens or hundreds, it’s entirely appropriate to order acknowlegement stationery, as you see in the samples in this blog. Typically, these are folded notes, inside of which you should sign your name. According to Peggy Post, author of Emily Post’s Etiquette, to those sending extensive letters, or those who are close to the family or loved one, or who have sent mass cards, flowers or other tokens, do write a few lines or more acknowleding their kindness, along with your signature.

Don’t hand write a message to everyone

But not everyone needs to receive a handwritten message inside the card, according to Post. For those who are not particularly close to the family or deceased and simply signed their names in a commercial sympathy card, it’s entirely appropriate to simply sign your name in the acknowledgment card.

Do be specific in your sympathy thank you note

Thank them for the flowers, helping with the ceremony, sharing a beautiful memory, etc. In other words, be specific. You can be direct and brief, but the specificity is important: “Thank you for the beautiful flowers.” “Thank you for the wonderful stories you shared in your card.”

See our collection of pre-printed sympathy thank you cards. Printed on double-thick paper with precision printing techniques, they are a step above what you can typically find through a funeral home.

Discovering personalized stationery has been a revelation. It feels wonderful to pull out a piece and make that first penstroke on the smooth paper topped with my name or monogram. Personalized stationery elevates the experience of letter writing.

For some people, owning personalized stationery is like owning a pair of really good, dark-rinse blue jeans or a string of pearls. It’s something you use often and looks great with everything. But for other people, it’s a bit of a mystery…it’s something you might have heard about or seen in an old photograph of a famous writer at his or her desk, but not anything you or your friends have ever actually owned.

To this point, I was 45 years old when I discovered the idea of personalized stationery. I grew up and live in a northern city in a squarely middle class neighborhood. My friends and family had always sent me notes on plain stationery. When I was younger, we used notebook paper or sometimes plain letter sheets. When I got older, we used greeting cards, or boxed cards from the grocery store. Later, we used email and now texting.

Personalized stationery options

At first, I considered each piece precious; I wanted to save it for “special” occasions. But soon I realized that — at $45 for a box of 25, or $70 for a box of 50 — it cost less to use my stationery than it did to buy a greeting card at the store….way less!

Now, when I want to sit down and write a letter or a thank-you, the first thing I do is to pull out my boxes of personalized stationery and decide which style to use: my white flat card with silver lettering, or my ivory folded note with an embossed monogram or my monogrammed ivory letter sheets.

There are two main methods of personalization: your initials (otherwise known as a monogram) or your name. For the longest time, I owned simple monogrammed stationery — a flat card with a navy monogram and a matching navy border. Simple. Classic. I wanted my first personalized stationery to be traditional like that. When my blue monogram stationery ran out, I tried an embossed monogram. I love that it is 100% recyclable and even compostable, so it is eco-friendly. At the same time, it’s also very classic.

Recently I discovered an intriguing lettering style and decided to try my name as the personalization. I love that one too!

A smart investment

My investment in personalized stationery has paid off. Writing notes and letters has become a pleasure. I delight in running my fingers over the raised lettering or embossing. I feel like my stationery expresses myself beautifully. And when my box runs low, I feel excited about making a decision: Do I reorder a favorite or select a new design?

Personalized stationery options can feel endless. To simplify your decision, go with your gut. What style speaks to you? Look in your closet: do you tend toward the traditional or the trendy? Perhaps take a cue there. Good luck with your decision!

Happy Letter Writing Week! We’re plugged in 24/7. We’re Instagramming, Lyfting, streaming and texting. Spending one week celebrating pen and ink — and perhaps even unplugging — feels like an extremely wonderful idea!

Slowing down and enjoying the pleasures of writing our thoughts to our dearest and closest friends and family may seem quaint, but letter writing can also be powerful. First, reaching out to others can strengthen our sense of community. Second, it can help us to unplug for an hour or two. Researchers tell us our screen culture increases our anxiety, cuts us off from one another and in some ways is more addictive than crack cocaine. Third, and let’s be honest here, letter writing gives us a chance to show off our beautiful stationery. Sure, we can use notebook paper or email, but where’s the fun in that?

I love the smooth feel of the stationery, the raised impression of the embossing or thermography, and crisp sounds of the paper rustling. It’s a total sensory experience, and those sensations are some of the pleasures of letter writing.

Letter Writing Tools

Currently, my stationery wardrobe features two main pieces:

Henley Monogram Wardrobe. Mine is embossed on ivory paper with opal linings inside the envelopes. It’s a classic combination and has the added benefit of being compostable and eco-friendly. I love the traditional letter sheets, enclosures (which I can use for just about any occasion) and folded notes. It’s such a treat to open my box and decide which paper to pull out.

Luna Card. I just received this stationery in the mail, and what a pleasure it was to open! The Luna Card features a beautiful new lettering style, which I ordered in silver raised ink on crisp white paper. It’s so pretty and feminine, but with a modern take, so it doesn’t feel old-fashioned.

So as you go through your contacts and decide whom to write during Letter Writing Week, put some thought into how the paper feels between your fingers, how the design enhances your experience. And if you feel the need to order new stationery, we have a wonderful selection of notes, cards and letter sheets, as well as new stationery to try.