Background

I wanted to print a calendar with my artwork years ago. It takes me years to collect 12+1 paintings that I like to put together. Finally, this holiday season I am able to try that. And I hope this would make a nice holiday gift for my family and friends.

For this calendar, I choose the fantasy theme. I may try the abstract theme later.

Here is what looks like inside–>

Inside

I’ve noticed that I have this greenish blue hue in my paintings, except for the owl and bear. I thought about using other bluish paintings such as the pair of swans instead of owl or bear. But the bear suits the winter holiday month better.

Printing websites

• Vistaprint This is the website I use. They are more budged friendly and easy to edit. My calendar size is 8″×11.5″ with top binding. Their free shipping bar is a little high but if you need to print a lot that won’t be a problem. By the way, I print my 3 folded brochures here.
• Shutterfly This website has a lot calendar to choose from. Starting price is higher than Vistaprint but they always have coupon codes that you can use. My problem is with the editing tools. It doesn’t work with me well.
• Snapfish This website has the highest starting price among these three providers. The good thing is they also have a lot coupon codes to use. My problem with Snapfish is still editing tools. It keeps asking me for higher resolution pictures when I am making the same size calendar as Vistaprint. For the record, Vistaprint also has low resolution warning so you won’t get a blurry product.

Tips

It can take days to edit something like this. My experience is don’t finish it right away. These websites all allow you to save your projects so you won’t lose any progress. Take you time to edit and leave it there. Come back the next day and you will find that you need to add this or change that. After several back and forth and you can’t find anything to change, then it is the time to put it into shopping cart.

I hope this helps. ❤