Gift idea - Photo calendars

Hiya lovelies!

Over the last few years I've made a habit of giving photo calendars as Christmas gifts for my mum and hubby's mum. I didn't get them made up the year before last and they were both so disappointed I'll make sure to do it every year now. We use mostly my photos and a few of my hubby's.

Previously I used Vistaprint, but I got so annoyed with never knowing how much anything would cost until I'd checked out because of the shipping and tax they throw on at the end. This year I decided to use Snapfish. I was very impressed with the thickness of the paper and the overall quality. Here are some photos from the two calendars I had made up. Bear in mind these are photos of photos so they'll be a tiny bit grainy.

It's a really easy photo upload system on Snapfish. You just upload the photos you want to use. You can edit them on Snapfish if you need to - orienting them, cropping them etc. I do all that to my photos in Paint Shop Pro first but it's handy if you don't have photo editing software. You can change the background colours on each page, choose how many photos you want to have and you can also use your own wording under the photos.

Because you only get a tiny preview on the Snapfish website of the photos you're uploading, I'd recommend you 'screen' all the photos you're going to upload first to make sure they're all in focus or the right shots. If they're too low res, and the picture would come out blurry, it'll tell you so you can choose a better photo.

I made a couple of small howlers. Because I was uploading different photos for each calendar to make them more personal for each family, I didn't screen all the photos. I had brain ache and skipped it, which came back to bite me on the bum. The cover on hubby's mum's calendar is one of my wedding photos where I was moving my hand so it's blurry, and I inadvertently uploaded a photo of Salisbury Cathedral to my mum's calendar when there was scaffolding in shot. Duh! I could always print out better photos and stick them on with double sided tape.

I have a discount code for Snapfish. I hope it's still valid. If you spend over £20 and use code SFUK26 you get 20% off. The calendars start at £14.99 at this size, but they also do the slimline long calendars from £9.99 each. When I bought my two there was a 35% off code so I got the two for just over £10 each, which is quite good I thought, especially as you can cut the photos out at the end of the year and keep them if you wish. 

Have you ever made photo calendars or any other kind of photo gift?

Thanks for reading!