Personalised pen

My sister's Christmas present: a pen and note book designed for her by me!

We came upon this pen shop, called Prodir, by accident. Walking around Zürich my husband wanted to go into this shop. I was thinking: "A pen shop? What do you want to do at a pen shop? You can buy a pen anywhere!"

It sounded boring having a shop that only sells pens.

Well, I was mistaken. A friendly guy (who spoke English very well - very important) asked if he may show us around and explain what happens there. He told us how you can design your own pen and note book, showed us how everything worked and showed us some examples. Very interesting. And immediately I thought "Christmas present for someone who lives in California and has everything (except a constant supply of Swiss chocolates)!"

We went back the next week because I wanted to bring a photograph to put on her pen (because you can do that), but in the end realised the picture would come out too small and not be worth printing. So here's how it works:

You walk into the shop and ask the friendly designer (that's right, they are all designers, not just shop assistants) if she speaks English because you're quite sure her English is going to be better than your German and it would just make things simpler. Of course she says yes. You smile gratefully and you tell her you want to make a pen. She takes you over to the big touch screens where she helps you to choose a type of pen, colours, and whatever else you want.

I wanted pink for my sister's pen, but the pen I chose did not come in any pink bits and I didn't want another kind of pen because I felt this one was the nicest. I liked the way it clicked. So I went with purple. You can have each part of the pen in a different colour and Andre wanted to add some bright orange bits in too, but I said no, it has to be a girly pen. I told him to make his own orange pen.

And by the way, you don't have to do everything on the touch screen only. You can also ask them to put the different parts and colours of the pen together, for you to see and decide which colours you like.

I decided to write my sister's name on her pen with a little heart after her name. You can change the colour, font and add shapes and things like I did with the heart.

When the pen was done I said I want a note book to go with the pen too. Decided on lime green polka dots with her name again in purple to match the pen.

And then it fits snugly inside the book!

If you tell them it's a gift they will wrap it beautifully too. (I had to carefully unwrap and re-wrap to take pictures because I knew you'd also like to see the pen!)