DIY Dry erase calendar

In my last post I gave a little teaser of the calendar I made, now many want to know how.

I've seen many on pinterest for sale but really? I'm not going to pay someone else to design one for me.

Also I noticed many of them weren't as brightly colored as I liked.

This is a crash course on using photoshop and digital scrap booking elements.

I am a HUGE fan of Design house digital, most of my elements are from there, I am in no way using their products to sell anything, I just want to show HOW you may make your own.

It helps if you have a basic understanding of how photoshop works and how to import things. 

I learned in college back in 2007, things have changed a ton so I scope out you tube and pinterest for tutorials on things I'm not familiar with.

ok lets get started,

First open your program,

create a new document.

now choose the size you want it. I made mine 16x 20"

You then get a blank image like this!

Now you need to get some background and elements on there!

to do that, File > open

then find the image you want to use.

 Choose open to get the image up on the screen and then drag to your blank canvas.

Although the background is there you will need to resize it.

Do to that you will go Edit > Free transform.

You will need to play around with resizing to get it right but a neat little trick is to hold down the shift key to keep the image from stretching in a weird manner.

Ok now that you have resized the image you know how to resize other elements as well!

Now say you don't like the background or element you just put on your canvas?

Layer > delete > layer.

Just make sure you erase the correct layer!

 Now you can play around with lines and different shapes!

I'm extremely lazy so all I do is layer elements one on top of each other.

There really isn't much design!

Now that your done, save it!

I usually save my project twice. once as a pdf and once as a jpeg.

Sometimes printers don't want to work so having an alternative is always a good choice!

Playing around in photo shop is the easiest way to learn, I skipped five million steps on how to lay out your calendar, but I have to be honest I made mine to meet my needs.

The best advice I can give is draw out what you want and need on a piece of paper so you have a mental image of what you are trying to make!

or If you are like me, just wing it!

And just incase you change your mind (you didn't screw up!!)

Edit > Step backwards is your new best friend!

Go Play!

thanks for stopping by!

W