How to Make a Homemade Calendar

It's easy to create your own calendar at home. All you need is a home computer and a quality printer to make a calendar that includes your own family photos or your art work. You can use graphics programs such as Photoshop to design a calendar that can rival any you find in a store. In addition, a personalized calendar is a great gift idea for holidays or special occasions.

Things You'll Need

• Photoshop or other graphics program Glossy paper Printer

Instructions

1. Open Photoshop and set the size and background for you image. Use whatever paper size you choose to buy for your printer.

2. Create a new layer. Use the various tools, such as the Pen tool, to create a grid for the month of January. Then create another layer above this for images. Create a third layer above this for the names, dates and special occasions you wish to note.

3. Continue working in layers, creating three layers for each month of the year. Each time you create a new set of three layers for a month, go to the little eye next to the layer in the Layers panel, and click it off so that those three disappear. This way, you can move on to the next three. You can more easily navigate through elements of your design and make changes when needed to each layer.
   You can also add photos to the image layers that you have saved as a file on your computer. For example, you might want to create a photo album collage calendar that incorporates different branches of your family for a special gift for your grandmother. You could also scan in your children's artwork to make a unique gift for a loved one.

4. Save your work. Then save a second copy of the file with "merged" added to the file name. Go to the Layers panel, and click on the top layer. Hold down the "CTRL" key and click "E." This will merge this layer with the one below it. Use this technique to merge each of the month's three types of layers into one, so that you are left with 12 layers, one for each month.

5. Make sure that only the top layer is visible. Print the first page of your calendar. Do the same with each of the following ones. These pages can be joined several ways, such as staples or binding rings.