Posh pashmina scarf from Thailand for $5

Our personal trainer at the gym is a pink fiend and when we ran across this gig offering to ship a handmade silk pashmina scarf from Thailand, we were intrigued. (Unfortunately the gig has since gotten lost in the vast Fiverr closet but you can see it here.)

The scarf is shimmery, unbelievably light and airy, with slubbed threads and an open weave. There’s sparse fringe on both ends. The whole shebang measures 60 inches long by 13 inches wide. The pink we selected is actually more like mauve, so we won’t be gifting it after all. Instead it’ll go into our wardrobe to await a wedding or other special occasion.

Color choices are: very dark purple, light blue, sea blue, mid blue, navy blue, yellow, orange, violet, purple, silver, red, murky green, light green, forest green, mid pink, light pink, golden brown, creamy white, black and bright turquoise.

Button, button, will make 4 CUSTOM 2 inch pin back buttons with anything you want on them for $5

If you could have a button that said anything you wanted, what would that be?

Instead of classics like “Dyslexics are teeple poo” or “Have a pheasant plucking day”, we were seized with an urge to have our Best of Fiverr logo on some pinback buttons. (Boring, we know.) On Fiverr, calocedrus is the Button King. He’s been making buttons for all reasons and seasons for years.

He took our small graphic, warned us it would be somewhat pixellated since it was a low resolution pic, and added a URL across the bottom. We show one but you get four identical buttons.

Add a two-spot for shipping and you’re set. We assume you can get a bulk price if you need ‘em for trade show gimmes or such.

Color photo transformed into pop art cartoon for $5

It’s a delicate and subtle effect, rendered by our friend Clyde (mousetivity), suitable for a variety of uses. And of the three types of effects Clyde does — pop art, comic book and posterization — we like this one the best. Though if you want your own personal “Oh no! I forgot to have children!” comic, he can do that too.

Our original stock photo:

The deliverable includes several versions without the pop art background, as well as with.

I will make your personalized (digital) greeting card for $5

What a lovely take on portraiture.

Indonesian Fiverr seller desainoke makes by a personalized greeting card in that she takes a photo of you, renders it into an artistic drawing, then adds any message you like so that the finished product is in a postcard format.

Our portrait postcard was in extremely high resolution (3508×2480 pixels), which is useful is you want to make a poster or other large object out of it. You could actually have it printed as a postcard if that’s your desire but you’ll have to find a printer.

desainoke (aka Imajinasi Dimas) has been drawing for 6 years and won 3 awards in competition.

I will send you a randomly-selected funny t shirt for $5

Fiverr seller conchtees says, “Be the envy of all your friends with your new funny tee, or be the awesome friend who gives the best gift at the party! You pick the size (S through 4XL) and gender. We’ll pick the shirt. ”

In retrospect we think we were hoping for a laugh-out-loud t-shirt that was funny without being gross. It turns out the randomness wasn’t all that random; the shirt we received was the Easy But Not Diseasy one shown in the picture. (Ours turned out to be a much darker green.) Total price including shipping was $9, which is a little steep if you end up not liking the design.

Our shirt blank is a 100% cotton Anvil made in Nicaragua. Nice weight. And kudos for offering large sizes, something not often seen. We’ll be gifting this to a friend.

Head shrinker

We’re always browsing Fiverr for the (well, let’s be honest) kinky and outrageous. Facebook girlfriends and dancing fiends are no longer enough to intrigue us. We want something authentic and startling that you can’t get anywhere else.

Which is why we were so juiced when we saw this shrunken head gig. As Fiverr seller sfx_artist says, “Why a shrunken head? Why the hell not?” Our sentiments exactly. For less than the price of movie admission this special effects artist will send you detailed illustrated instructions for making your own latex shrunken heads. There’s just enough detail about the actual process used by tribal primitives to creep you out slightly. And what could be better than a frisson of horror for Halloween?

sfx_artist asks that you not copy the plans and resell them, which seems fair — you wouldn’t copy a book page-for-page and run off hundreds of copies, would you? And frankly, we wouldn’t mess with a guy who knows this much about preserving the heads of his enemies.