The LAMOSE Journal

Guides, stories, and ideas from our Calgary workshop. Tips on custom drinkware, gift inspiration, and behind-the-scenes looks at how we craft your favourites.

Journal

Coworker Birthday Gifts They Actually Keep (Not Regift)

The office drawer is full of gifts nobody claimed. An engraved name fixes that — here's how to pick the right one for a coworker's birthday.

Cash gets spent on rent, jewelry sits in a drawer, campus mugs don't survive the move. What actually travels with a new grad: an engraved steel bottle with their name on it.

Every retirement party gets the same three gifts: a bottle of wine, a card everyone signed, and a plaque with the company logo. The wine gets drunk that weekend. The card gets tossed. The plaque goes in a closet. Thirty...

Walk into any hospital break room and count the mugs. Half of them are nurse-themed gifts — syringes on the handle, "coffee is my cardio" on the side. Now ask whose they are. Nobody knows. That's the whole problem with...

Skip the gift card. An engraved tumbler with their new title or the date marks the milestone, not just the occasion, and it's still on their desk a year later.

Sympathy Gifts They'll Actually Keep

Skip the basket. An engraved keepsake doesn't wilt, spoil, or ask anything of a grieving person — and it doesn't need to arrive before the funeral.

Ask Vancouver where to get something engraved and you get a strange answer: a Reddit thread, a Yelp list, and the website of a mall chain that closed every store it had. Things Engraved shut all 73 of its Canadian...

The mall counter that used to answer this question is gone. Things Engraved closed all 73 of its Canadian stores in January 2020, and six years later people are still typing "things engraved toronto" into Google and landing on a...

Skip the registry crystal. The best engagement gift is something the couple uses the morning after, not china they unwrap at the wedding and store in a cabinet. A pair of everyday tumblers engraved with the proposal date gets used...

Skip the basket and the card. One engraved bottle or tumbler, their name and start date cut into the steel, costs less than most gift baskets and outlasts the job itself.

Housewarming Gifts People Actually Keep

Skip the candle and the gift basket. Engrave the new address or move-in date onto something they'll actually use every day.

We run a laser engraver and a UV printer side by side in Calgary. Here's when to pick each, what they cost, and which one outlasts the dishwasher.

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