Give Custom Calendars This Christmas

By Author: Kaitlyn Miller
Total Articles: 90
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Thinking of what to give your family and friends on Christmas can be a daunting task, especially if you do not have a lot of budget to give individual gifts. But even with a small budget, you can still actually express your warm greetings this coming Yuletide season with custom calendars. You can do it yourself so that you do not have to spend much. You just have to get some things from the store in order to do your own calendar printing. Then you can already give a thoughtful personalized gift to them.

You need of course to have a computer and a printer at home in order to do this. But here is what you need to buy. Then you will need a paper cutter and a cutting mat.

- Sheets of thin printable magnets that have a paper surface

- Transparent plastic tape (matte or gloss)

- Plastic packaging, gift cards, and ribbons

Use Adobe Photoshop to layout your customized magnetic calendar. You can decide whatever size you want. But it would be nice to have it like the size of ¼ of your magnetic sheet, which could be short size or A4 size.

Go the internet and find a calendar template. ...
... Choose a large resolution size calendar and just reduce it to fit your size. Copy this and paste it on your Photoshop file. Adjust the size of the calendar. Don’t make it too small so that the numbers are still readable.

Find a nice photo or two of your family and position it in the layout. You can put one on top and another at the bottom of the layout while positioning the calendar in between. Or you can use only one photo and place it at the top then put a greeting at the bottom. Or you can put a nice bible verse there and then sign it off, “From, the Jones Family.”

When you are done with your layout; save it as a JPG file. Close the PSD file and open the JPG file. Then open another file that is the size of your sheet. Copy the JPG file into the new template. Make four copies of your layout to fill one sheet. Print your magnet using an inkjet printer. Do a test print before making many copies so that you will know if you need to make corrections or adjustments.

Once you have made the right number of copies, proceed to laminating your magnets. This will insure that the printed area will not be smeared if it gets wet or handled with wet hands. Just make sure that the ink is dry before doing. Wait about 20 minutes before starting on the laminating process. Use a rubber spatula to smoothen the bubbles during lamination.

When you are done, cut the calendars using your paper cutter. As long as the blade is sharp, you can easily cut these magnetic sheets. Use a ruler to make your cutting straight.

You can wrap your magnetic custom calendars individually using clear plastic. Then fasten the plastic close at the top with a nice ribbon. You can also print the gift cards yourself using your inkjet printer. Then punch a hole on the side so that can just tie it along with the ribbon. If not, you can also just tape it on the package. This calendar printing will save you much on your Christmas gifts.

For more information, you can visit this page on calendar printing