How to make a desk calendar at home with your own photos

The simplest desk calendar that looks shop-bought is a stack of twelve cards, one per month, each with a photo and a month grid. On A4 card each month is a quarter of the sheet: 148 × 105 mm, the A6 postcard size, which is big enough to read the dates from across a desk and small enough not to dominate it. On US Letter each card is 140 × 108 mm.

Four months fit on one landscape sheet, so a full year is three sheets. Everything prints on one side, which means you need no duplex printer, nothing has to line up on the back, and you can use single-sided photo card if you want the pictures glossy. The whole job takes about an hour, most of it choosing photos.

Pick twelve photos before you open any software. A calendar works best when each photo matches its month: snow or a fire in January, blossom in April, the beach in August. If you are making it as a present, last year's best photo from each month is a ready-made plan, and it turns the calendar into a record of the year as well as a planner.

A calendar does not have to start in January. Foldpic asks for a start month and year and fills in the month names, the weekday headings and every date from there, so a calendar that runs from a birthday in May to the following April is no more work than a calendar year. Choose whether weeks start on Monday or Sunday, and add special dates such as birthdays and anniversaries; they are marked on the grid every year they fall in.

Each month card has three common layouts: a photo on one side with the dates beside it, a wide photo above the dates for landscapes, and two smaller photos beside the dates for busy months. Mixing them stops twelve cards looking repetitive. Portrait photos suit the side-by-side layout; panoramas and group shots suit the photo-above layout.

Keep faces away from the very edge of the card. You will cut on the lines between cards, and a home printer cannot print right to the edge of the sheet, so the outer 4–6 mm of the sheet may lose a sliver. The templates Quiet Year, Field Notes Year and Family Year already leave that margin; if you build your own, keep important detail at least 5 mm inside every edge.

Print the three sheets on 200–300 gsm card at 100% scale (Actual size, never Fit to page), one side only. Heavy card stays flat on a desk; 160 gsm works but curls. Check the first sheet before printing the other two: January (or your first month) should be top left. Let inkjet prints dry for two or three minutes.

Cut each sheet once across and once down the middle, using the small tick marks printed on the edges. A paper trimmer makes this a one-minute job; a craft knife against a metal ruler works just as well. Stack the twelve cards in order with the first month on top, square the stack against the table, and clip the top edge with a 32 mm binder clip. Fold the clip's two wire handles back and the calendar stands on its own.

Flip each month over the back of the stack when it ends rather than tearing it off; the clip keeps the order and the calendar stays thick enough to stand. If you prefer a ring, punch two holes 10 mm from the top edge and thread a 25 mm binder ring through them, then lean the calendar against a small easel.

Matte card shows fingermarks less than gloss. If the calendar is for a kitchen or a workshop, a cheap laminating pouch per card keeps it clean, though laminated cards are slippery in a binder clip, so use a ring instead.