Holiday Gift Ideas: DIY Photo Flip Calendar

Today I'm going to show you another homemade gift idea, an easy homemade photo flip calendar. I have made photo calendars in the past, but none were as easy or as nice looking as these.

During our last trip to IKEA to buy some furniture for the house, we came across these flip photo frames that were perfect for making flip calendars. Not only are they the perfect size and design for a photo flip calendar, but they have exactly 6 pages; so, when using one month per side, you end up with exactly 12 months.

You will need:

• Photo flip frame/album (I used the IKEA Finlir, but there are some other options through Amazon with room for a few more pictures: like this one or this one.)
• 12 monthly photo calendars, one for each month of the year, in the size of your frame.
  (I needed 10x15cm (4×6 in.))

First, let me give you some ideas for making your monthly photo calendars…

Making a Flip Calendar Using Photoshop

If you have Adobe Photoshop, you have an easy, attractive option. There is a free Photoshop script available for printing out photo calendars. You can download Jeffrey’s Photoshop Calendar-Template-Building Script here. If you have a picture open in Photoshop when you run the action, the photo will automatically be placed in the background of the calendar for the month you choose. If you don't have a picture open, there is a marked layer where you can drag or paste in the desired photo after the calendar is generated.

I love the free calendar action because it is fully customizable. You can choose the language for your calendar, the day that you want each week to start on, and have many other options to choose from.

This is the result of using the Calendar Photoshop Action

Once you have finished running the script, you can play around with the picture somewhat to fix how it displays in your calendar. So, if one of the numbers hits your photo in a strange place, you can fix that somewhat before printing out your calendar.

Making a Flip Calendar Using Google Calendars:

You can also use Google Calendars to generate your monthly calendars. At first, I tried using Google Calendar to make mine. I was going to add photos on the side of or in the background of each calendar, but it was taking a long time for me to manipulate each picture with each calendar in a way that I liked. In any case, it is a valid option if you don't have Photoshop.

To use Google Calendars, go to https://www.google.com/calendar  and open up a calendar for the month that you want to print out.

This is what I was getting with Google Calendars. If I had planned to use it, I would have worked on removing the extra text and gray squares on the days from the other months!

On the upper right, you will see a drop down menu that says “more.” Click on it and click on the option to “print” from that menu. A calendar print preview will show up with options for printing out the calendar in the format you choose.

If you want to add photos to your calendars in a photo editing program, instead of printing out the calendar, use the “save as” option to save the calendar as a pdf. You can now use that file with your photo editing software (if it supports PDF) to add pictures and/or other design elements.

Once you have your calendars printed out…

All that is left to do is to slip the calendars into your flip frame.

Begin with January and February, back to back, and slip them into the first page of the flip frame. Continue with March and April together, May and June, and so forth.