The week before Christmas I spent what amounted to a great number of hours making a photo calendar for Christmas gifts for Laelia’s grandparents. At first I was using Costco Photo Center—mostly because I print most of my photos through Costco and therefore I understand the quality of their prints and their excellent prices. I had uploaded all of my photos and almost placed every one until I realized I just couldn’t bear to put so much work into something and not really love the backgrounds available. I figured, there has to be a calendar editor out there that has, at the very least, some cute backgrounds and embellishments at one’s disposal…
So I did a little searching and I settled on Shutterfly. I’m sure I’m late to the party on this one. Being a graphic designer with in depth knowledge of adobe programs, I tend to stray from this sort of service, not because I look down on it or anything, but because I usually just think “I’ll do it from scratch and it will be exactly what I want”. I’m sure if I decided to forgo a service and make a calendar from scratch it would have been different, but using Shutterfly was still immensely satisfying (satisfying enough to share, too!). There are a fair share of cheesy graphics, but also plenty to work with. However, I did tap into my cheesy side a little when I decided to add little sayings to each page (They so encourage this by having a text box on every page!). The most frustrating thing was trying to find layouts with the right proportions. I think it would be nice if you could do a little sizing and placement yourself. Anyway, an added bonus to making a calendar as a gift was that I got to write in all the family’s birthdays and anniversaries (you can even include photos)! It was a big challenge for Tyler’s family, as his is pretty big, but I think his mother will appreciate having all special dates relevant to her family, including her nieces and nephew’s anniversaries and all of her great nieces and great nephews birthdays, already printed in the calendar! Now I’m going to make myself one. I sure could use that sort of information glaring at me from across the room!
You can check out the whole calendar if you’d like right here.