CD case desk calendar - great for Christmas!

I'm not claiming this as an original idea - my DH was given a promotional calendar last year, and the cards were housed in an empty CD case, so I thought I'd give it a go and see how easy (and quick) it would be to make one myself. I'm really pleased with how it turned out, and can almost guarantee that a number of our relatives will be getting one for Christmas! You will need: empty CD case (the kind that will fold back so that the lid will sit on your desk) sheets of A4 photo paper or cardstock paper trimmer ruler Measure the CD case - the paper inserts will need to fit inside (mine are 11.6cm x 13.5cm). I made my inserts by drawing a text box in Publisher the exact size that I wanted the finished cards to be, then filling the box with the calendar for each month, a photo and an image to finish it off. Once you get into the swing of it, it's really easy to cut and paste from one month to the next. Publisher has a variety of calendar styles you can use and manipulate, or you can create tables in Word for the calendar part, if you have a 2008 calendar to hand (Google can help with this!) I decided to use fairly random photos of my girls for the calendar I made, but you could match the theme of your photos to each particular month, so wintry photos for December, January, and February, fresher, greener photos for the spring months, ice-cream and holidays for the summer months, and beautiful autumn hues for September, October and November. I also found that I had gaps to fill, and used a lovely dingbat font by David Walker to add the fun images. Once I was happy with the layout for each month, I printed them off onto photo paper - cardstock would work just as well, you just need to ensure that you use something thick enough so that the cards will stand rigid in the CD case. Once I'd printed them off, I trimmed the months to size, following the thick black line I'd put around the text box. This is when it starts to come together. Put your months into the right order, et voila! A fairly quick and really straightforward gift. Once the calendar pages are in the closed CD case, tie the case with a brightly coloured ribbon, and add a handmade gift tag. If you wanted to make these as teacher gifts for Christmas you could use inspirational quotes, or seasonal stock photos instead of family snaps, or you could scan children's drawings and use those as your images. Enjoy!