It might be a little late to be ordering something personalized in time to get it for Christmas this year, but if there’s a last-minute person on your list, perhaps you could present an IOU for a special gift to be delivered later?  Personal Creations, like RedEnvelope and Shari’s Berries, will deliver directly to the recipient’s home.

Although I found some items I liked, I did not find the site, overall, to be quite as easy to use as these other two.  I would have liked to be able to shop by price range, which doesn’t seem to be an option.  And setting up the shipping was a bit of a headache.  The first item I ordered takes longer to produce than the others, so they couldn’t ship it as soon.  This sort of made a mess of things.

The site did not give me the option to hold the earlier-availability items and ship everything together; it automatically forced me to send separate shipments.  When I went to set up the shipping addresses, it showed every individual item as a separate shipment, and I had to set shipping addresses for all of them.  As it turns out, it ended up putting the two (almost-)currently-available items into one shipment, after all, but this was not at all apparent from the screen where I needed to set the shipments up.

So What’d I Get?

The thing I’m most excited about, the Name Puzzle Board, is the part that’s not here yet.  Because it has to be completely created, rather than just engraved/marked/printed (I assume that’s why, anyway), it takes longer than many of the other products.  I’m excited about it, though, because my toddler has an unusual name (at least here in the U.S.), so she is not likely to find a lot of manufactured items with her name on them.

I also got a Character Charm Key Ring.  Unlike most “mother’s jewelry,” this has separate child charms, so new ones can be added.  (Although I don’t see a simple way to order individual charms – something else that would be a good feature for Personal Creations to add.)  As our family is still growing, any “children” jewelry, apparel, etc. is pretty well wasted if it can’t readily be added to.

Finally, I purchased a Black Utility Key Chain with my husband’s name on it.  (Hopefully he won’t read this before Christmas!)  This is basically a small pocketknife on a key ring, but it’s marked with his name.  I can’t seem to find it on the site now, to show you.

Be sure to search for coupon codes before placing your order!  I got free shipping, which made a significant difference.

Update:

Our puzzle was substantially delayed.  I didn’t mind this delay, but wish the communication had been better.  I did get one email that it was going to be delayed for 2 weeks (which apparently went to my spam folder) but, to the best of my knowledge, did not receive any notification that it was further delayed.  I really wish that delayed items would show as “backordered” or something when you log in to check on your order status.  The company did promptly address the issue, though, when contacted, and went above and beyond to make it right.

Livia’s puzzle finally arrived just in time for her birthday!

(Sorry ’bout the glare – it’s still in the plastic so the pieces won’t fall out while I have it propped up, photographing it.)

Because of her unusual name, it’s especially nice to be able to get her something personalized.  And this puzzle should help her learn to spell her name as time goes by.  (She just turned two, so I expect that to be a little while yet. 🙂 )

Disclosure: I received a Personal Creations gift code to place my order and facilitate this review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.