This gallery contains samples of my jewel case desk calendars and an explanation of how I went about producing them. But first the background story.

Several years ago, my employer distributed a CD case-sized calendar to the staff. I thought it was a nice design and that my photos and digital artwork would look nice with such a treatment. Unfortunately, if you weren't printing hundreds of calendars at once there was no way to do it.

Someone online suggested unsnapping a CD case and flipping the case around. This worked nicely but creating the calendar grid was a pain. My next find was 455 Rocket's excellent calendar templates here at PBase. These were for actual CD cases and I was reluctant to have to tell customers they have to disassemble a CD case to make a calendar case.

Enter Calendar-Case.com. They had cases that were just the right size. But now what do I do about a template?

Enter HappyNewYear, a Mac program that produces the calendar sheets by selecting the dates you want and dragging the pictures on the 12 sheets on the screen. The best part was that the program cost just $10. Another great thing about this program is that it produces a calendar where the pictures have a "full bleed". That is, they go all the way to the edge of the page. They look so much more professional that way.

I was off and running. With some embellishments in PhotoShop I could make the calendar designs distinctively my own.

The final find was LumaPix's FotoFusion. I started using this program to make collages and recently discovered how nicely it can be used to create calendar templates including the front and back covers. I still needed the calendar grid part of the HappyNewYear calendar but all my layout problems were solved.

Take a look at the results of my labors. I am also working on other designs and other sizes now that CalendarCase.com has new case sizes available.

Here are the links to the sites and products I've mentioned:

ENJOY!