As the new year rolls around, creating photo wall calendars can help you stay organized with a personal touch. With Shutterfly, it’s easy to make a calendar that shows the timeline you need as well as photos that can brighten your day each time you flip to a new page. Find out how to make a wall calendar customized online in seven easy steps. You’ll love being able to customize your 2023 wall calendar size, style, messages, and more. After you’re done, you’ll have a custom calendar you can use in your office, kitchen, bedroom, or anywhere you need it.
1. Choose a Calendar Style
To get started creating your custom wall calendar, choose a calendar style you love. Shutterfly offers modern wall calendar styles, colorful options, seasonal designs, and more. With numerous styles to choose from, you can make sure the 2023 wall calendar design matches the rest of your style in the room where you’ll hang the calendar. If you’d like your calendar to feature specific occasions and moments, you can take advantage of Shutterfly’s storytelling styles that feature premium designs and guided story for each calendar page. Explore our calendar styles that feature your latest travel destinations, wedding, or just a reflection of the past year you had.
2. Choose Your Calendar Size
As you’re creating your 2023 calendar, decide if you want to make your own large wall calendar or a smaller at a glance wall calendar. You can choose an 8×11 wall calendar size or 12×12 wall calendar size to meet your needs. The large calendar may be great if you have more photos you’d like to feature and if you need more room to write appointments and to-do lists on the wall calendar.
3. Choose Your Calendar Timeline
With Shutterfly’s 2023 wall calendars, customization is key. You can choose to start your 12 month calendar at the start of the year on January 1 or any other month you decide to start your personalized calendar on. A year-long wall calendar is classic and perfect for keeping track of vacations, holidays, and more. For the best calendars you can include various templates for each month and incorporate photos taken that specific month to add a touch of personality.
4. Upload Your Favorite Photos
Uploading your favorite photos is the most important part to make your own calendar. With this step, you get to relive all your favorite memories throughout the year or choose the best photos that match your calendar theme. Upload as many photos as you think you’ll need so it’s easy to select your favorites for each page. Your photo calendar can include family portraits, vacation photos, pet photos, baby photos, and much more. In addtion to uploading your photos onto your Shutterfly account, you can also see which other photos look amazing on different Shutterfly products such as within photo books or on wall art decor.
5. Customize Your Calendar Layout
Once your photos are uploaded, you can storyboard your 2023 calendar to decide what the layout should look like on each page. You can create a classic calendar design with one featured photo per page, or get creative and add photo collages each month. Shutterfly’s wall calendar layouts can accommodate more than five photos per page, so you don’t have to remove photos if there are too many to decide between.
6. Include Stickers and Embellishments
To make your photo calendar more fun, add stylish embellishments and stickers. The embellishments let you add fun quotes next to your photos as well as ribbons and frames that can make your photos pop on the page. With the custom sticker embellishments, you can also personalize your dates with key events, like birthdays, parties, and more. Add unique icons to your special days so they stand out and look great on your wall calendar.
7. Add Unique Text and Messages
The last step to creating a custom calendar is including messages or short text boxes on each page. Depending on the layout, you might have room to include descriptions about your photos, or just include a short inspirational quote for each month. Some creative ideas for text include adding a family recipe for each month so you can keep the wall calendar in your kitchen and stay inspired. You can also ask the kids to write a poem for each month so they’ll have fun creating the calendar as well.
Using Shutterfly’s Online Calendar Maker
It’s simple to learn how to make a 2023 wall calendar with Shutterfly. When using our online calendar maker, it’s easy to navigate different layouts and styles and click and drag your photos to different spots. At the top of the design template, you’ll have options to continuously save your project, change the size at any time, and shuffle your page layouts. The simple buttons let you click to add more photos from your computer as well as different social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. If you want to include some stock photos, you can always use Shutterfly’s Art Library as well.
As you’re designing, you can use Shutterfly’s premade layouts as they are or click the buttons on the top to add different photo areas and text boxes. While you’re editing, you’ll always be able to undo or redo what you’ve done, so don’t worry about mistakes! To edit as seamlessly as possible, you can zoom in and out of your design and also switch to full-screen mode to make everything easier to see.
Before playing around with the 2023 wall calendar editor, make sure you use the Events tab to select the different holidays and occasions you want to feature in your calendar. You can also use the Storyboard tab to easily plan out your calendar pages and make it easier before you get into editing mode.
Design Ideas for a Custom Calendar
Personalized calendars can take on any theme you like. If you’re struggling with too many options, try some of the design ideas below. Sticking with one theme can make it easier to select the photos you want to use as well as the colors and design elements. Along with these popular ideas, you can also design a classic holiday calendar where the photo each month aligns with the main holiday that year.
Photo Engagement Calendars
Were you recently engaged this past year? A photo calendar is one of the best ways to celebrate the greatest moment of your year. A photo engagement calendar could also be a great wedding gift if you’re close to the happy couple. Choose a different engagement photo for each month so you get to see everything that happened as you flip through the year. An engagement photo calendar is a great theme choice to be able to add loving messages on each page or quotes about romance and partnership.
Custom Dog Calendars
There’s nothing like seeing new pictures of our best friends to make each month special. With a custom dog calendar, you can use funny pictures of your pet to brighten up each page in the wall calendar. A dog calendar or other pet calendar will also make a great gift that you can give to your loved ones. Everyone has a special partnership with their pets, so it’s a clear winner as a present!
Baby Picture Calendars
If you have a baby, you definitely have endless photos that you can use. Why not turn the best baby photos into a personalized wall calendar? If you have a toddler, you can even pair their photos with pictures of their drawings or coloring pages to make a unique calendar dedicated to their growth and creativity. Keep the baby picture calendar for years to come so your baby memories last forever.
Wrapping Up
With Shutterly’s design options to make your own wall calendar, you can create something absolutely special. Heading into the New Year, wall calendars also make excellent gifts. Instead of gifting something standard that you can get at the store, a personalized calendar makes it feel unique and shows that you’ve put care into creating the calendar. If you already have a wall calendar, consider other types of calendars that are just as easy to customize. Customize a desk calendar for your home office or a beautiful easel calendar that you can put on your fireplace mantel as functional decor.
Additional Resources
Best 2023 Monthly Calendars To Choose From
