Calendars are one of our favorite gift-giving digital products…mostly because they are useful, pretty, and share a piece of our lives with loved ones.
In the past few weeks, we’ve been getting e-mails asking for resources for printing our 2-page 11×8.5 calendars so thought I could offer some options/tips here today.
Printing at Home
Of course, the obvious option is printing at home. The upper photo layout portion measures 11×8.5, as does the bottom calendar portion. You’ll need a printer that prints borderless and two-sided photo paper, normally offered in matte. Find a paper that is made for your printer model to ensure highest quality printing.
You’ll need 13 pieces of photo paper to print the entire calendar. The first page can have a cover for the calendar when it is closed, and on the other side would be the photo layout for January (flipped vertically from the front). The second page would have January’s calendar and on the other side would be the photo layout for February (flipped vertically from the front). And so on. You can then take to your print center and have them add a roller binding for you (or if you have the cool Zutter’s Bind-It-All, you can bind it yourself).
Tip: When selecting your printer properties during printing of the calendar pages, make sure you select the correct paper type and size, as well as Borderless printing. You also will need to print landscape, since the calendar is 11 inches wide.
On-line Print Labs
Customized calendar printing is very popular with on-line print labs, so most offer the ability to upload our finished 11×8.5 photo layouts to use in the calendars. The key is to look for borderless/full-bleed 11×8.5 photos for the top portion of the calendar, so you can upload your finished pages as 11×8.5 flattened JPGs.
Most print labs print a generic calendar at the bottom of the calendar, and don’t allow our coordinating calendars to be uploaded/printed.
The following are printers we know of offering full bleed 11×8.5 photo calendars:
If you have experience with printing 11×8.5 digital calendars with other print labs, we’d love to hear about it!
Let us know if you have any questions and we’ll help as best we can.
Happy gift creating!
Michelle
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Enter coupon code during checkout in Promo Code field. Coupon Codes expire October 31, 2009. Coupon codes not valid on purchase of Gift Certificates.
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