Calendar with Pictures of Embroidery Designs
Do you have some favourite embroidery designs that you have digitized yourself or perhaps designs you have purchased or downloaded that are your favourites? Did you know that these embroidery designs can be used not only as designs, but also as graphics?
One way of using graphics of these designs are images on a calendar. With Embird and a graphics program it is very easy to use graphics of your embroidery designs as pictures. The image below is one of my favourite designs, a combination of several designs with the Ship’s Captain design from Dakota Collectibles as the foreground or focal point of the design combination.
How do you turn your embroidery designs into graphics for a calendar or any other use? It’s very quick and easy, using a combination of Embird and a graphics program.
1. Open Embird Manager; navigate to the folder in which you have saved your design or designs you wish to use as images for a calendar. The listing of designs in the chosen folder will be in the files window in the right toolbar. Double click on the name of the embroidery design you wish to use. The image of the design will then be shown in the middle panel.
2. Right click anywhere in the middle panel; in the new pop-up screen select export image. If you leave the selections at the default, a .jpg image of the design will be saved in the same folder as the design. Click on ok.
3. Open the design in a graphics program. Crop any excess area around the design; resize it to a width of approximately 400 to 450 pixels at a resolution of 100 pixels to the inch.
4. Save the design in a new folder, i.e. “calendar images”. It is now ready to be used for the calendar page.
5. Repeat steps 1 through 4 for any other pictures you wish to use for your calendar project. Save 12 to 13 designs so you have an extra design that you can substitute for one you thought you just had to have but decided it wasn’t “just right”.
There are several photo sharing sites that will let you create a custom photo calendar, but at some point most of the sites are either limited to what you can create or will ask for payment. A site that you can have a lot of fun with, and not only for calendars, is Big Huge Labs. Scroll down and click on the calendar icon. In the next screen you will be able to follow the instructions to make three different styles of calendars using the images you have saved. It’s quick and easy and you can really “wow” your friends and relatives with these calendars.
When printing your calendar pages, use good quality photo-quality paper for the best printing results. You can also take these pages to an office supply store to have the pages Cerlock bound, giving your calendar that “professional” finish.
Hints: If you run your own embroidery business or have a web site, add a bit of advertising to your calendar by adding your web address or the name of your business in a blank space on the calendar page. Usually there is a blank space at the very bottom where you can add the information or perhaps inside the blank days at the beginning or end of the first or last row of days. A great way to promote your web site or business! Or if you are not in business, you can simply add a personal message or inspirational saying on each page. If you are comfortable working with graphics programs, you can also personalize each month by adding birthdays and other special dates to remember.
Have fun with calendars and while you are at Big Huge Labs’ main page, be sure to check out all the other neat things you can do with your photos or images.