Make Your Own 2008 Calendar for Free

Do you wish to create your own calendar for next year? I have a solution for: free and simple to use.
Also, at the end of this article, you’ll find a free PhotoAxe calendar which is my Christmas Gift from me to you, my readers. All photos in the calender are copyrighted by me, lau, and they are all made in Romania. And you know what? It’s a really cool calendar of which I’m very proud of.

Create Your Own Calendar

SmartDraw is the World’s Most Popular Business Graphics Software that helps you quickly and easily create great-looking calendars, planners and more! Get ready-made templates and customize them using clip art, your business logo, or even digital photos! There is a 7 days trial, enough time for you to set-up a calendar and print it.
Here’s a link to direct download the software.
Have you installed it? Good. Let’s mo on.
Step 1:
From the calendar menu on the right, choose a SmartTemplate. Scroll down to see the templates that allow you to include your own pictures. I like Photo Calendar 1 (Landscape) and Photo Calendar 4 (Portrait).

Step 2:
A new window will appear and from the Smart Panel on the right you will now set up the date for each page.
Step 3:
Next you can place appointments (supposing you already know them) and the moon phases. I toked some time to look over at the yearly moon phases over the Internet so here’s where to put the full moon symbol:
Year Month Day
2008 Jan 22
2008 Feb 21
2008 Mar 21
2008 Apr 20
2008 May 20
2008 Jun 18
2008 Jul 18
2008 Aug 16
2008 Sep 15
2008 Oct 14
2008 Nov 13
2008 Dec 12
Step 4:
Now you can add the text of your appointments. For example: mother’s birthday, dad’s birthday, sister’s/brother’s birthday, wedding day, and so on…
Step 5:
Add your desired picture: since you won’t sale the calendar, you can add whatever picture you like no matter who’s if that person allows you to do so. Just make sure you have it at big resolution for high quality printing (a min of 5 mp).
On the top menu you will see plenty of available settings for picture adjustments. Also, I preferred to unlock all movements so that I will stretch my picture to fit how I want.
Step 6:
Advanced features can be controlled from the main menu. For example, you can adjust paper size and margins from the Page menu. From Home menu you can change the style and color design of each shape (the color surrounding the day of the week for example) or even insert new shapes. Font and alignment of the text is also available for adjustments.
Even more advanced, you can add maps, charts, web pages and tables, charts. For me this is kind of useless.
If you don’t want a plane white background (for the entire paper or just some cells), you can change that in many ways by cliquing on the right mouse button (look at the picture at the right). The texture collection is amazing. In the Library Panel (next to the Smart Panel) you have an even more impressive collection of clip-arts which you can use to illustrate the appointments.
Step 7:
Print, save, convert to pdf and all other commands are located next to the product logo in the upper left corner of your screen. The very useful undo control is the first button here.
Now here’s the cover of my calendar and the download links. Enjoy! (The cover is made in Photoshop since this calendar software did not appear to have a cover making feature.) Disclaimer: this calendar is a gift from me and may/should not be sold by any means.

Photoaxe Calendar