In response to a request made on the Facebook page, I decided to make this homemade gift ideas post. Personalized calendars make great homemade gift ideas because they are so easy to, well, personalize.Basically you take your own photos and print them on the back of dated calendar pages get them bound at Kinko’s (err… Fedx Kinko’s, FedEx Office, or whatever it is now) and you are done.

Now there are a few ways you could go about this. The easiest, but most expensive and less “homemade” way is to take 12 photos to Kinko’s, and have them do all of the work. You can also upload your photos to Kinko’s calendar site here, and them pick them up at a later time. I worked at Kinko’s many years ago, and I remember doing tons of these every holiday season. They do a pretty good job, but it is a bit expensive, I think they start off at $19.99.

Another option is to use these homemade calendar kits from Red River Paper. However, their kit includes a digital template on a cd that is openable only in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. The people at Red River Paper are great though, and their quality is outstanding. I have ordered from them many times for homemade postcards and greeting cards that I have printed and given as gifts.

If you want to spend less money, and have the satisfaction of doing them yourself  then use the following process:

1. You’ll need to download calendar templates to print out. There are tons out there. Just Google “free 2010 calendar templates” and you’ll find a large variety. For this tutorial, you’ll need a template will fit on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper landscaped… meaning when the paper is turned so it is wide and not tall, like in the bottom half of the photo above. I personally like the templates here at calendar template site for Microsoft Word. If you are using a Mac and you get the message that your operating system does not support it, ignore the message and download it anyway, because it does.

2. Print out your calendar pages.

3. Compile your photos on your computer. Horizontal photos work best, becasue the pages will be situated horizontally. You can use vertical photos, but there will be a lot of white space on the left and right when you finish.

4. Now here is the tricky part. You need to print your photos on the back sides of the calendar pages so that when flipped they appear right side up in relationship to the monthe below it, like in the above photo. Also, if you want a particular photo to go with a particular month, say a halloween costume photo to go with October, that photo needs to be printed on the back of September. If you haven’t done this before, it might take a few tries, so you will probably end up wasting the first couple of pages. It will make sense the more you do it.

5. For binding the calendar I would suggest just going to Kinko’s to have them coil bound it. It costs four or five dollars per bind, but they do a good job, it looks nice, and I think they still put a clear protective cover on the front and back for you. And unless you have a comb binder at home this might be the only option.

There are other ways to make homemade personalized calendars that don’t necessarily involve using photos, and are more “homemade”. I might do another post on other options another time.

Thanks goes to the Facebook fan that suggested this homemade gift idea.

Homemade Gift Idea #96: Homemade Personalized Photo Calendars is a post from: 100 homemade gift ideas

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