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MAKE A CALENDAR I thought that my celebration of NaBloPoMo might include a few posts along the lines of "stuff to do with your photos" and what better way to start than with a 2008 calendar? What you'll need: 12 x 13 photos that are at least 2,300 x 1,800 pixels, a Cafe Press account and about 4 hours (that's roughly how long it took me to prep, upload the files and create the final product). Why a calendar? I think that they make great gifts for friends and family. It's a gift that keeps on giving throughout the year and with a base price of $14.99, something that's not too hard on the pocketbook. In creating a calendar through Cafe Press, you can sell them as well. I sat down on Saturday morning and in about 4 hours created a calendar with some of my favourite photos from 2007 that I'll give to friends and family this holiday season and maybe sell a few along the way. Why Cafe Press? I've made a few calendars with them over the years and I find the quality to be good and their templates helpful in getting my photos sorted for the product. If you want to use the template, you can download it from Cafe Press here. STEP 1: Open the template in your favourite image application (I use Photoshop). Go through your photo archives and select 12 images for each month. I like to choose a photo that was taken roughly that month the year before, but you can do whatever tickles your fancy. Open the images in your image application and then copy and paste them into individual layers on the template. If the images are bigger you can either move the photos around to a cropping that pleases you or scale the images down until a) most of the image is visible with a full bleed over the four edges or, b) if your photos is a square, there's some white space visible on both sides. My photos for my 2008 calendar are a selection of pix taken with film cameras, some 35mm and some 120. 120 film is square and I decided to align one photos right and the other left. Two images are panormic and so there's white space top and bottom. Here's a sample:  You can see what all of the months look like here. For months where there would be some white space, I created a new layer underneath filled it with white and then once my photo was where I wanted it to be on the page, merged the two layers together. 
Once you've sorted the months out, you'll need to make a cover for your calendar. I selected my favourite image (August) and then positioned a black bar and white text overtop.With the months and the cover done, save them out as high resolution JPG files. I named mine 01.jpg, 02.jpg, etc., so I could keep the order straight. STEP 2: Login to your Cafe Press account and if you haven't created a shop, step through that process. Once that's done, click on the orange "Add a Product" button. We're making the Wall Calendar that's listed under "Cards, Prints & Calendars." A pop up window will appear and scroll down to the 11 x 8.5 Wall Calendar (there are a few calendar options so make sure you select the one I'm using so the image sizes match -- you can pick another product, but the image sizes might be off). Once you've selected the calendar, it will appear in the yellow "Products To Be Added" window on the right hand side. If you see "Wall Calendar" listed click on the orange "Add These Products" button (I swear this is easy -- it just seems convoluted). STEP 3: We're at the Wall Calendar creation point (yay!). You'll step through adding your photos on month at a time beginning with the calendar cover. To do so, click on the "Select Image" button and follow along for adding new images. Given that the images can be 1 - 2 MB each, I would suggest making yourself a nice cup of tea at this point. Uploading each image can take a few minutes and this is where the bulk of your time is going to be spent. Step through each month adding the images you've created. Once you're finished with the photos, you'll need to add a title and description of your calendar. Once that's done, you'll have a lovely calendar that you can buy for yourself or sell. If you make a calendar, please let me know and I'll list them below.
11/ 2/2007
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