I’m all about making gift cards more personal, as you know. So I have to give some props to Gift Card Lab, a site that allows you to create your own Visa gift card. You can select from hundreds of canned images or upload a picture of your own.

With teacher appreciation coming up and the myriad of coaches I need to thank year round, I love the personal touch of putting a meaningful picture on the plastic.

Shown here is one of the teacher designs available on the site. Plus I uploaded a picture of my daughter’s basketball team to see what the gals would look like on a gift card. Darn cute.

My boys are playing Little League right now and I’m the team parent for my oldest. I’ve snapped some great shots of the kids already. At the end of the year, I’m thinking we’ll present each coach with a photo collage plus a photo gift card. Both memorable and now one picture can be useful as well.

This is also a great idea for bulk gift cards. Imagine handing customers a Visa gift card with your logo, tag line, or “cause” imprinted on it. Might make a bigger impact than a t-shirt.

Companies are increasingly using gift cards as employee and customer incentives…and I like it! At a recent training seminar my husband attended, instructors handed out $10 P.F. Chang’s gift cards to participants who answered questions correctly. With three little kids, Paul and I typically only go to restaurants with booth seating (for containment) and ketchup on the table (as an indicator of menu selection). But we broke the rules when Dad came home from his trip with enough gift cards to take us all out for dinner. We had a great time and Ally declared P.F. Chang’s her new favorite restaurant. My kids are growing up.

The gift cards are obviously gone, but the positive memory is lasting. Conversely, my girlfriend just received a pair of high-end sunglasses for a job well done at the office (i.e. “the future is so bright, you have to wear shades”). The sunglasses are nice, but they’re not her style. And she doesn’t want to wear the exact same sunglasses everyone else on the sales team is now wearing anyway.

Her company should have taken a note from Stoner Bunting who did a similar promotion but used Sunglass Hut gift cards instead.

Though both companies had good intent, Renee’s (name changed) company spent a great deal of money on sunglasses that not everyone appreciated. Had they given out gift cards instead, recipients could have personalized their reward. And I imagine they could have had quite a fashion show as staff members revealed their choices. That seems like a double loss to me–wasted sunglasses and a missed morale booster.

I’ve added a new page to the Gift Card Girlfriend site to talk more about gift cards in the office. I appreciate Stoner Bunting for bringing this issue to my attention and would love to hear more about your experiences with gift cards from work.