Having a hard time finding a unique baby gift for your friends newborn? Trying to get something a little more personal but also not trying to spend a lot of money?

I feel ya. I recently did something like this for my best friend who had his first baby boy. My friends and I made him a Pabst onesie (I know, awesome right? It had just a single image of a huge PBR can on it. Hilarious.) and a few Simpsons onesies on this website online where you can easily make any kind of customized onesie you’d like by uploading an image and clicking a few buttons. (The temptation to make half way offensive/funny baby clothing is off the charts here, by the way… but a beer can was as close as I wanted to stray into that territory.)

While onsies are awesome (and super cute), this site is about baby bibs. Cute baby bibs, to be exact, and what’s cuter and cooler than a personalized baby bib for your baby or your friends baby?

Here are some tips and ideas on making custom, unique, personalized baby bibs.

1. CafePress is awesome for this kind of stuff. You can upload images and push it onto baby bibs and practically anything and everything else under the sun. They also sell some really neat “underground” custom baby bibs. What I mean is that other people who aren’t some gigantic baby gift company are making their own fun baby bibs and whatnot and sell them through this site, which will print them on demand and send them to you when you order it, right then and there.

2. Copyrighted images are a pain. You’re not supposed to use them. I highly doubt any of the companies that allow people to print personalized baby bibs are going to stop you from putting Dora and your babies on name on the bib though. If they do, post a comment and let us know what happened to your custom baby bib. It’s probably best to use your own images and just not mess with this problem.

3. Having some graphic design skills will come in handy. What I mean is that it’s a lot easier to make a custom image in Paint or Photoshop and then upload the completed graphic to Cafepress (or whatever), than it is to use the online image editors. They kinda stink to be honest, and some sites don’t even offer the ability to edit the graphics, only upload pre-made images.

4. Feel free to sign your work. But do it small. Putting your name or a “From: Sandy” on the bib is cool, but the bib is about the baby, not about you! Besides, the bigger your name, the more chances that it’ll spend the next few years getting half eaten food spilled onto it. Not too flattering eh?

5. Use high quality digital images. You’re not going to want to print a picture that somone uploaded off Facebook onto a big baby bib. The reason is that even though the pictures came from a digital camera, Facebook automatically compressing the image to make it smaller (size wise, MB wise). When printed up this way, it might look pixelated – i.e. not very good. You want to get the picture from the digital camera itself. If this is meaningless geek talk to you, just look at the size of the picture. If it’s something like 50 KB, it’s not gonna work probably. If it’s like 1MB, it’s probably perfect. This is one of the worst aspects when you make your own baby bib online – don’t forget about this!

Now, let me break the mold here and bust out of this numbered narrative to make the last point. Unless you have to, don’t send it directly to the person from the website. Gifts mean a lot more with a card or a note in your own handwriting. It’s quite impersonal to send a custom baby bib directly from a company to your friends house! Make the gift your own by repackaging and sending it to them, or hand delivering it in a gift box with the personalized baby bibs inside.

Cheap baby bibs eh?

What are you looking for exactly – how much cheaper does it get than a baby bib if you’re buying a gift for a baby? Just kidding. The truth is, like every other product out there for babies, there’s a high end (such as ridiculous so-called designer baby bibs – what the heck?) and a low end (such as the old school, ever perfect and always in style plain white baby bibs).

What if you’re looking for a cheap baby bib, where do you look and what do you look for? Short of buying 1,000 wholesale baby bibs (I hope you don’t know that many babies!), the easiest way is buy them online at sites like Ebay or Amazon, or, for those who aren’t opposed to real life shopping, check out the staples of all things cheap: Target, Walmart and Kmart.

Here you will find cheap baby bibs which also happen to be some of the best selling baby bibs of all time.

I’m talking about such non-controversial and functional bibs as:

1. cotton baby bibs
2. disposable baby bibs
3. plain baby bibs
4. plastic baby bibs
5. white baby bibs
6. blank baby bibs
7. free baby bibs (five finger discount*)

(* Note that # 7 Comes with a free ride in a police car, too!)

If top selling is equivalent to “best”, then these truly are the best baby bibs out there. They might not be unique, funny, or handmade, but they do the job, and they are – what’s todays word, folks? That’s right: CHEAP.

How much money are we talking about then when we’re looking for quality yet decently priced bib ware for toddlers, infants, and babies? Walmart sells three packs of baby bibs that don’t even cost $3 a piece. (And these aren’t even plain or white ones – they have actual designs on them!)

For just plain or blank ones, we have now moved into uber cheap territory, with an individual bib costing $1-2. At that kind of price, you could afford to buy the Octo-Mom all her baby’s bibs!

If you’re looking to save your family money, you really can afford to buy in bulk. For instance, Walmart sells online a huge box of 500 disposable baby bibs for an insanely cheap price of $67.98. That’s more than 1 baby bib a day for a whole year. Awesome deal! (And for those who are curious, that comes out to about 13 cents per baby bib, which wins the award for all time cheapest bib you could buy, ever, anywhere.

Ah, where would we be as a nation without our funny yet funky baby bibs? (Answer: Canada. *)

Yea, there’s something about the contrast or juxtaposition of a newborn infant, innocent to all of the world and hardly even aware of its own existence, wearing a shirt that calls out their Mom for being a slut.

PLUS, it’s a great way to get out some passive aggressive feeling towards your significant other, husband, wife, or best friend by buying a rude baby bib that secretly pushes your own agenda. (Think: “My Mom is a MILF.”)

Let’s look at 3 of them that I think are fairly offensive yet still pretty funny.

*Just kidding. Canada rocks. Final answer: Britain.

BABY FOR SALE

What could be worse than a baby wearing a bib that says “For Sale?”

Well, I can think of a few things, (“Sold” comes to mind), but we won’t get into that.

The Point: this is a hilarious baby bib.

EAT SHIT CRY

Well, this is one of those baby bibs that pretty much sums it all up, doesn’t it? What else does your baby do but eat, poop, and cry?

Maybe they should add an asterick that reads *And sleep only when I want to.

This one made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it though.

If you’re looking for a rude baby bib that doesn’t push the envelope too far, this is a keeper.

MY SISTER’S A SLUT

Dear god, is there a baby way to start showing favoritism than to dress up your babies in some mean bibs that mock the other kid?

To really get a good old fashioned sibling rivarly going, you need to start young.

Do it the right way by putting this on your baby who has a sister.

Then take a lot of pictures.

Then, when your daughter has a baby at age 14, tell her “I told you so.”

THREE YAGER BOMBS LATER AND HERE I AM

This is funny because it’s true.

Or at least, it is for about 5 parents I know. What about you?

Three Yager Bombs Later and Here I Am sums up much of the populations existence.

For more offensive/rude/funny baby bibs (and whatnot), check out Cafepress. They have a ton of them and it’s nothing you can ever buy at a store, as they’re all from individual low key sellers who make a little side cash selling personalized baby bibs online!

Note: all images in this article come from Rude Baby Bibs. Thanks guys! I hope this post sends some traffic your way.