Looking for a new custom calendar.

M

mauckcg

Senior Member
For the past three years i have been ordering custom calendars through Nations Photo Lab as Christmas presents for friends and family. They are very nice, but not very customizable.

I'm looking for something in the 8x11 to 11x14 range that will allow me to label the pictures. In my case i use pictures of the cars from races and aircraft from airshows and it would be nice to label them on the calendar so everyone knows what it is and where it was at.

Any ideas?
 
cwgrizz

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
@hark may have some ideas. I think she has been doing calendars for a while. I really don't have any suggestions other than possibly adding text to the photo itself.
 
N

nickt

Senior Member
The local calendar on our fridge is done like Walt suggested. White or black font. If the image is busy at the bottom, they added a white or black fill behind the text. It looks alright.
 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
For some reason the quote feature isn't working for me. @cwgrizz mentioned I've been making calendars. This current year (2017) was the first calendar I made as a fund raiser for church. I followed these directions and made my own from scratch because I couldn't find any of the templates that stores offered to be to my liking.


Prior to this calendar, I made a number of 20"x30" collage posters from scratch--all with text on them. What I found the easiest to do is to decide what color to make the text. Then I added a Score to the text (outlining) and usually a Drop Shadow. The score/outlining needs to be in a contrasting color to make the text stand out. If the background is dark, use white to score/outline and use whatever color you want for the text color. If the background is white, use black or some other color for the score/outlining that will make your text stand out. Black and white always work well.

Here are a couple of the posters I made for one of our high schools. Each block of text is its own layer. Any scoring, drop shadows, and bevels are added in Photoshop as a layer style. Everything I made was done in Photoshop. The first few posters might have been made in Photoshop Elements.

Are you familiar with using layers in Photoshop? In this first poster below, it looks like I had 10 layers of text. The upload compression from this forum really distorts how the scoring and drop shadows look. When viewed in person, the drop shadows were more of a grey color. If you are using LightRoom, I have no clue how to add text so I'm sorry I can't be of help there.

One Act Plays.jpg


Dessert Theatre.jpg
 
Marilynne

Marilynne

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
I use Shutterfly.com to make my calendars. Here's a sample.
DSC_5974_001.JPG

You pick the layout, number of photos per page, background, font, etc. Actually, I use them for all my stuff - greeting cards, books, puzzles, playing cards, bags.... They offer a lot of free stuff throughout the year also.

I think [MENTION=10762]Kevin H[/MENTION] uses Vistaprint.
 
C

carguy

Senior Member
Great topic. I"ve been creating a calendar for family at christmas and want a better solution myself. I'm currently using Walgreens......
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
mauckcg said:
For the past three years i have been ordering custom calendars through Nations Photo Lab as Christmas presents for friends and family. They are very nice, but not very customizable.

I'm looking for something in the 8x11 to 11x14 range that will allow me to label the pictures. In my case i use pictures of the cars from races and aircraft from airshows and it would be nice to label them on the calendar so everyone knows what it is and where it was at.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
I use Vistaprint for a lot of stuff like this (business cards, etc.) Probably not the cheapest, but very good quality stuff: Vistaprint Calendars

And while I don't know if you can put custom text on the calendar, could you instead put your custom text on the photo itself, before uploading it for use in the calendar? I would think that would give you the most flexibility. Most any decent editing software should have an option to overlay text on your photo.
...
 
K

Kevin H

Senior Member
Marilynne said:
I use Shutterfly.com to make my calendars. Here's a sample.
View attachment 258010

You pick the layout, number of photos per page, background, font, etc. Actually, I use them for all my stuff - greeting cards, books, puzzles, playing cards, bags.... They offer a lot of free stuff throughout the year also.

I think @Kevin H uses Vistaprint.
Click to expand...

Yes Vistaprint

Horoscope Fish said:
I use Vistaprint for a lot of stuff like this (business cards, etc.) Probably not the cheapest, but very good quality stuff: Vistaprint Calendars

And while I don't know if you can put custom text on the calendar, could you instead put your custom text on the photo itself, before uploading it for use in the calendar? I would think that would give you the most flexibility. Most any decent editing software should have an option to overlay text on your photo.
...
Click to expand...

You can type in any of the dates(birthdays, anniversaries etc.) also below the pic wait for specials sometime 70% off and customer service is amazing
 
Marilynne

Marilynne

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Kevin H said:
You can type in any of the dates(birthdays, anniversaries etc.) also below the pic wait for specials sometime 70% off and customer service is amazing
Click to expand...

You can add birthdays, anniversaries, special events, etc on the actual day of the month. Calendar is made with thick stock paper (couldn't find paper weight on their site). I've never seen more than 50% discount, but once in a while they offer a free calendar, just pay S/H. I've ordered calendars from them for the last three years. Big hit with the family.

 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
carguy said:
About to make this year's Christmas Calendars via VistaPrint - thanks for the recommendation :)
Click to expand...

Cyber Monday is almost over...and so is their Cyber Monday deal of up to 60% off. Promo code is BESTDEALS.
 
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