11 Dec 2009

Show off your garden photos! 2010 calendars


Here's one I made earlier … (fits into CD case)

For me, one of the many benefits of writing this blog is being able to indulge my love of photography - there's so much to photograph in nature and it's just great to have a showcase for my pics.  It's more a question of luck than judgment with me but occasionally I get a photo I'm really pleased with.  In a moment of madness, I toyed with the idea of designing my own 2010 calendar to show off my prize pics - yikes! can you imagine the work, copying all those dates! - but, luckily, a timely email reminded me of the Canon Creative Park website where some lovely people have already done that and uploaded their work to share.  If, like me, you have more creative thoughts than time, I'm happy to share my finds with you.

First up, the Photoframe calendar 0013.  This downloads as an A4 (or US letter, you choose) page-per-month calendar.  Print onto card or photo paper and glue on your photos (it will take up to 7"x 5"). Better still, open in Photoshop (or similar) and drag your photo from another file onto the calendar and print.  I did the latter, changing the black border for a cheerier colour and also put a white fill over the Canon logo to erase it (ooh, cheeky!) and replaced with my blog address. Here's a screen grab of my work-in-progress:



I like this one because there's room to write in reminders and birthdays.  Once printed, hold together with a bulldog clip and hang on a hook - or use a magnetic bulldog clip and display on your fridge, filing cabinet or wall if you have magnetic paint!  (Not as silly as it sounds, believe me!)  Another option would be to hole punch two holes through all 12 sheets, tie with ribbon or string and hang.  If you use a big bulldog clip and stuff a pencil through the top, you could hang this one in your allotment shed and note down when you sowed your seeds, planted stuff out, or list jobs to be done.

If you have access to an empty CD jewel case, this next one would make a nice stocking filler: again from Canon, the Photoframe Calendar 016.  This time, you download a folder of 6 pages as there are 2 months to each printed page; you crop the edges and cut in two - once you've added your photos as above.  The photo size needed here is 4.75" x 2.75".  I also added some stripes at the side of my photos - a) because I like stripes and b) I was then able to keep the proportion of my images.

Here's my January and February ready for the chop:



And here's the finished calendar, sitting prettily next to my kitchen Sage:



With this one, I like that it's economical with paper.  But if you want this size with a cover page, and don't mind printing out 12 pages and wasting half of them cropping down to size (you will keep the offcuts for lists, etc, won't you…!), the first calendar (shown right at the top) is one I made after finding a template from the Shutter Sisters blog. (Click here to check this one out.) Their design scores a gold star for looks by using a clean and uncluttered font; maybe I'll combine the two.  Yeh, right … if only I had the time!

P.S.  If you groan at the thought of trawling back through your digital photo archives, here's how I do it:  I have a separate folder sitting on my computer desktop.  When I get a photo I really like, I make a copy of the original and pop the copy into the "specials" folder.  That way all my best gardening photos are kept to hand.  Same goes for family snaps. Simple.

I hope to be putting up my tree and dragging out the baubles this weekend - and enjoying plenty of mince pies and Bailey's as a reward.  Wishing you all a great weekend friends!

1 comment:

  1. Some great tips there, and I love your calendars, they would make great stocking fillers.

    ReplyDelete

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