A photo calendar can make a great gift to just about anyone. Whether you need to congratulate the recipient after a job promotion, give them a special event, or simply wish them success throughout the year, a family photo calendar can be an amazing way to help keep special memories fresh in the mind of the recipient.
The best part is that it’s a fairly inexpensive yet meaningful gift that’s easy to personalize just for your intended recipients. Below are five helpful tips you could use to create the perfect photo calendar to give to family members.
1. Choose the Best Digital Pictures
With nearly every social media platform out there, it’s easy to snap a photo and post it on the internet for others to view and appreciate. These sites can equally be a great source of the pictures you need to create your photo calendar. While you could get a few from photo sharing and storage sites, Facebook and Instagram are by far some of the best places to get family photos for your custom calendars.
It’s even better if you have a couple of the most recent pictures of the family on a flash drive, HDD, or cloud storage. You can put all these photos in a single digital location and select some of the best ones to use for the various pages of your family calendar. Don’t be afraid to include scanned copies of old photos with special memories.
2. Edit Your Photos Using Photo-Editing Software
When it comes to photo editing, professional photography editors use advanced software to add textures, retouch photos, resize them, crop them, and even rotate them to best suit their use. But don’t worry, you don’t have to go the professional route.
Basic photo editing tools are also available at a much more affordable rate if not free. Many of them are easier to use and may provide access to an online community where you can share or borrow tips and even have someone look over your photos before you go ahead and print them for your calendar.
3. Try Out Different Photo Calendar Templates
Are you starting a new family tradition of creating photo calendars of the different activities you do together each year? Whether you make one for the holiday season or simply a couple months before the big one, there are several different templates and styles that you can try out to pick the best design for your photo calendar.
The number of templates and features you can choose from will depend largely on the tool you use to make your photo calendar. With Mixbook’s picture calendar maker, you even have the liberty to customize your year using editing tools, stickers, flexible layouts, and more.
Experimenting with different templates allows you to pick a personalized design that will definitely wow the calendar recipient. You can also add personalized information like dates of birth, anniversaries, and such, highlighting them in a different font or color.
4. Print Your Calendar on Quality Paper
Remember that quality is one of the most important factors when printing photos to make a calendar. If you ask professional photographers, the paper you choose will often have a huge impact on print quality. When you use glossy paper, such as the paper you’d normally use for making a photo album, you may not be able to eliminate unwanted blemishes.
Choose a heavier paper such as double-sided matte paper. Also, adding gesso will enhance your photos and harden the paper you are printing on, resulting in a professional quality print. Alternatively, you can approach a professional printing service if you don’t have a printer, scanner, and other equipment at your disposal.
5. Finishing Touches: Bind and Put Your Calendar Together
Once you print your calendar pages, it’s time for some finishing touches. Bind your photo calendar pages together using brads and paper punches. For a more customized look, try incorporating cool embellishments like ribbons, colorful pins, or even scrapbooking. These will go a long way in livening up your calendar even for those who open it only once a year.
These are just some of the things you can consider when creating photo calendars for family members. And when it comes to customization, the options are almost endless.