Printing Calendars

I did my first photo calendar two years ago. I sent it off to be printed and had to have them reprinted due to a printing error. Last year, I also sent the photos off to be printed at Shutterfly. I liked the job that Shutterfly did, but when I checked out prices, they were not running the sale that they were last year. To get an advantageous price, I needed to order 50 calendars. I only need a little over 30 at this point. I checked around with two local printers and the price was still higher. I went and looked at papers at Office Depot and decided to try printing myself this year.

End result: I'm pleased with the appearance of my calendar. The paper is not quite as thick as last years, but the colors printed out vibrantly on my i9900 printer. I've printed roughly 25 of the calendars so far. Time and energy . . . get them printed elsewhere . . . . money and cost . . . get them printed elsewhere. My paper cost was not bad, but the i9900 uses ink incredibly fast, and it was not designed for such a hefty, long running print job. One day, it printed photo pages almost all day long. By the end of the day, it was tired. Even when it was not out of ink or paper and not finished with the current print job, it would "rest." If I gave it a few minutes, and pushed the load button on the front, it began printing again. My guess is that something internal was getting hot, or perhaps one ink was about to run out.

I did my Christmas cards again this year. They are easy to print (especially now that I've figured out how to get the image on the paper with no borders and no trimming after the fact.) I printed front and back in a very short period of time.

So . . . an early New Year's Resolution . . . . Get the calendars ready in November and then find someone else to print them.

Christmas Cards on the Road

We only stayed in the Austin area a few days. We went by the Hubbard Museum of the American West to see my photos that made the exhibit. Then we spent four days at Bosque del Apache. We explored three other lesser known wildlife refuges in New Mexico.

But I knew that it was time to get the Christmas cards printed and delivered. I had done the preliminary designs in Amarillo. When we were in Austin we packed up the printer and the extra ink cartridges. One of the evenings at the Bosque I started printed out the cards. But, unfortunately, I ran out of a couple of colors of ink. So the next day at the mid-day break from photography we went back to Socorro where we were spending the night. We drove all around town looking for the office supply store we had located on the web. Turned out it was on the square. It was a cute little store with a little bit of everything. My printer requires 8 different colors of ink. They had two colors - not enough demand to stock all the colors. Naturally they were not the colors I needed. The other small complication in the first print run were some strange yellow spots. ARGHHH! But I did get enough printed to get one batch mailed off in Socorro.




When we drove through Albuquerque, we found the Office Depot near the interstate, and I stocked up. That night in the Comfort Inn in Las Vegas, we hauled all the stuff up the stairs to our room. And began the print process again. This time I was successful in getting all the cards printed and mailed off in Las Vegas.



And, for those that want to know, this Santa is VERY special - my kids know their daddy is the REAL Santa Claus!