Crafty Corner with Shannen is a personalised gift business run by Shannen, a mum of two from Prudhoe, Northumberland. She creates custom vinyl items — from clothing and mugs to seasonal baubles and Christmas Eve boxes — and needed a shop that matched the warmth and personality of her work.
The Brief
Shannen had been selling through word of mouth and social media but had no dedicated storefront of her own. She needed a WooCommerce site that could handle personalised orders — where customers could add their custom text, pick their colours, and buy with confidence — without Shannen having to chase every order via DMs.
The brief was clear: make it feel like her. Bold, colourful, and full of personality — a reflection of the handmade products themselves.
The Challenge
Personalised products are notoriously tricky in WooCommerce. Off-the-shelf plugins exist, but they are either expensive, clunky to style, or tie the business to a recurring licence cost. Shannen also needed a mug designer that felt genuinely interactive — not just a text box and a prayer.
The site also needed to work for a non-technical owner. Shannen manages her own products and orders; the admin experience had to be as clear as the storefront.
The Approach
We built a completely custom live mug designer — no plugin, no licence, no compromise. Customers choose their mug colour, pick from five vinyl-friendly fonts, select their vinyl colour, and type up to three lines of personalised text. The preview updates in real time so shoppers can see exactly what they are getting before they add to cart.
For the overall design, we went bold. A “Sticker Book” theme — thick outlines, flat vibrant colours, zigzag section dividers, and polka dot accents — makes the site feel handmade in the best possible way. It is the kind of site that makes you smile before you have read a word.
The Build
- WordPress FSE custom child theme — no page builder, owned outright
- WooCommerce configured for physical goods with personalisation — clothing, mugs, bags, and seasonal lines
- Custom mug designer — built from scratch in vanilla JS; font selector, vinyl colour picker, mug variant switcher, live preview canvas, character limits per line, and add-to-cart lock until personalisation is complete
- Order capture — all customisation choices saved directly to the WooCommerce order so Shannen knows exactly what to make
- PayPal payments — simple, trusted checkout that customers already know
- UK shipping zones — local Prudhoe pickup and posted UK-wide
The Outcome
Shannen now has a storefront that is entirely hers — no marketplace fees, no algorithm to fight, no chasing orders through Instagram DMs. Customers can browse, customise, and buy at any hour. The mug designer in particular removes a huge amount of back-and-forth: every order arrives with everything Shannen needs to get straight to work.
Full case study with live screenshots to follow once the site goes live.