There you are sitting in the wreckage of Thanksgiving, bones on the platter, gravy on the tablecloth, dishes piled to the ceiling, the television blasting the kids screaming, the dog spitting up something that’s either blood or cranberry sauce and the only thing you can think of is, “How can I get this cleaned up in time to make it to the Black Friday sales?”
Are you nuts? Why would you do that? You just spent the three most excruciating days of your life fixing a dinner which lasted less than one quarter of the Green Bay Detroit game and now you want to enter the most extreme sports event in all of history, the Black Friday Sales?
That’ll get you killed and having had some experience with that sort of thing, no not Black Friday Sales, the getting killed part, no I did not get killed, but I did almost die and that is a lot like getting killed and why aren’t you paying closer attention? Back to getting killed, you don’t seriously want to go out in that mad free for all do ya?
I didn’t think so. So why do it? You have an advantage over all those guys with the shin guards and the hip pads, you are an artist and creating unique and personal things is what you do all year not for ten hours the day after Thanksgiving.
Why are you risking life and limb at the store when you could be sitting at the computer making something that no one else could make and offering a gift so personal and thoughtful that it renders the recipient speechless?
I’ve all ready mentioned Zazzle and they do have a cart-load of things that can be worked up and sent out for Christmas, but let’s say that you spent every dime you have on that big dinner or the cat came down with a strange illness and the Vet decided that they needed a new Mercedes more than you needed your property tax money or that walnut dressing that you had three helpings of had a nut that didn’t get shelled and you bit down on it and your tooth cracked and now you are waiting with an ice pack and the phone in your hands for the clock to eek its way to Monday morning so that you can call the dentist and find out that he’s in Cancun and won’t be back until January, but he has a nice elderly doctor covering all of his calls, just leave your name and number and Dr. Kevorkian will get right back to you.
So you can’t eat any more and you’re gonna need an income stream for that dentist/Vet/turkey bill so why not use the time to make something which will save money and might be useful as a marketing tool?
Calendars. I know, how did it get to this late in the year without me noticing? Okay, so there was that pesky little hospital thing, but what’s your excuse? No matter, it did get this late and if you are going to do anything about it you have to get busy now.
As usual with my projects there are a bunch of ways you can do this. Most of you will have something on your computer already which will let you build a calendar.
For those of you with the high priced spread or the little, bitty, kid sister of the great PhotoShop, PhotoShop Elements, you have a calendar maker included in the program. I don’t like it much because you have to compose the pages and then send them out to be processed, but it will do the job.
Snapfish and Zazzle will make a calendar for you much like PhotoShop or you can take the whole pile of images down to
Staples and let their print shop do the do-wah.
But for me, the best way is to download a little free program, Daysease
and run it.
There is nothing hard about the download, and Softpedia is a reliable site. I went there today and downloaded another copy for my other computer to make sure it was safe for you to use.
Once you’ve downloaded Daysease run it and it will give you enough options to make any kind of calendar you like.
You do have to unzip the file, but you know how to do that, you double click on the folder which looks like it is wrapped in Scrooge’s chains and tell it where to put the unzipped file. I made a new folder and put it in Windows Program files, but you can put it anywhere you like.
Once it is unzipped you’ll need to create a short-cut for your desktop. Go to the folder right click on the flower and when the pop-up menu shows up tell it to create a short-cut. Then you drag the new short-cut to your desktop and you’re ready to go.
Each time you use it a window will pop up and tell you this hasn’t been verified by Windows. If that annoys you as much as it did me, just uncheck the little box which says perform this each time the program is started. That will get rid of the annoying Windows whinedow and the program will start like any other program.
Here’s the only trick to the whole calendar thingy, printing. Print your calendar page, the grab the end that comes out of the printer first and lifting the print by that edge load it back in the printer with the printed side down. Let me clarify blank side facing out, top of the printed side facing the sheet carrier, and the image on the printed side right side up. If you can read what is printed on the page it’s the right way. If it is upside down its wrong. Did that make sense?
Print twelve months of pages, you’ll wind up with one image and no calendar back and one calendar with no image back and hopefully that will be the image for January and the calendar for December.
I like to use comb binders for the spine, but you can do what works for you. Staples will do the punching and supply the comb for a minimal fee or you can just break down and buy a comb binder, cause you’ll use it for lots of stuff and besides it’s a business expense and with all you make you’re gonna need the write-off come April the fifteenth.
And now you know how to make a calendar and can thrill all of your relatives and business contacts with Studio by the Big Water calendars for next year and save yourself the pain and agony of Wally World on Black Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment