How to Make Giftable Photo Calendars that Also Kick Off the New Year
Photo Calendar Ideas For All Occasions
As 2017 winds down, many of us are so focused on celebrating and gifting that we forget to set ourselves up for a smooth transition to the New Year. Creating a calendar is a great way to be working on both simultaneously – with none of the stress that comes with a futile attempt at multitasking. You’re planning for an organized and well-scheduled 2018 – and you just so happen to be checking off Christmas gifts for family and friends in the process. Okay, maybe I’m airbrushing that process just a little bit, but still, the fact remains: people love personal calendars, and making them with Mixbook is easy.
While many people manage the real logistics of scheduling on some sort of digital calendar, printed calendars are far from obsolete. Even the most hard-core online schedulers like to have a physical, printed calendar hanging on the wall – and Christmas has always been the time to give them and get them. Come December pop-up stores dedicated to nothing but calendars – with themes ranging from silly to serious and images of beautiful people, landscapes, pets and babies – pop up in every mall. But because the most common use of a wall calendar is scanning dates and tracking family birthdays and anniversaries, most people want their calendars to feature THEIR beautiful people, landscapes, pets and babies – the ones THEY know and love.
Family Love The family theme is no less awesome for how obvious it is. My sister sends me a family calendar every Christmas, and I look forward to getting it and seeing a new picture of her kids each month. It’s not rocket science, just fun, playful images that roughly illustrate the main holidays or general activities in any given month. She also uses photographs to illustrate special days, with a picture of their decorated tree on December 25th and a wedding picture on every family member’s anniversary. Every year she asks me if I still enjoy getting it, and every year I reiterate that she’d be in trouble if I didn’t! Sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents and close friends will cherish your family calendar.
My favorite Mixbook themes for this calendar…
Pet-O-Mania Create a calendar that celebrates a beloved pet by following the same general pattern as you would making a calendar featuring family. Choose photos that are season/holiday appropriate. You can also make it silly by channeling every email chain with silly cat pictures and every YouTube video you’ve seen featuring cats and dogs making funny faces, swinging from fans, chasing their tales, climbing in boxes, hiding in bags, and getting wrapped up in Christmas paper. Choose photos that feature your favorite furball (or feathered friend, I suppose) displaying similar antics, adding captions for even more hilarity.
My favorite Mixbook theme for this calendar…
Artful Collage Choose a theme like numbers or colors, and create a collage for each month of the year. If you go with numbers, use “1” for January, “2” for February, and so on. You can get artful with photography in a similar style to my favorite “found numbers photo book.” Or you can create a color collage using a different color for each month of the year. Simply gather photos and display them using a layout that accommodates lots of pics. My favorite inspiration for this kind of creative exercise is Nichole Robertson’s book Paris in Color.
My favorite Mixbook theme for this calendar…
Beautiful Landscapes Seeing a big beautiful image of an ocean or a mountain is calming, which is one reason they’ve always been popular for calendars. But when that big beautiful image is of the ocean view or mountain pass that YOU know and love, it’s that much more powerful. Create a calendar that gathers all the striking landscapes you’ve gazed upon throughout the past year. You’ll want to choose season-appropriate images to illustrate each month. Another variation on this theme is to photograph the same view each month of the year, then use that photograph to create a calendar that showcases the subtle changes in color, texture and mood each month.
My favorite Mixbook theme for this calendar…
In Loving Memory Calendars If you’ve lost someone special in the past year, creating a calendar dedicated to their memory is a really nice way to help friends and family members cope. One of the biggest fears people have when someone they love passes away is that their image will fade in their minds. Creating a calendar that features favorite photos of that person from throughout the year is a wonderful gift for everyone who’s grieving.
My favorite Mixbook themes for this calendar…
Happy Multitasking! I mean, Happy Mixbooking!
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