When you have me put together a spoof, I can make the fake magazine cover and inside page layout from scratch, which means that every masterpiece of counterfeit news gets special unique attention to the subject you want to portray, whether it is humor oriented, or a more serious treatment.  Custom products for such low cost will probably not last forever, so act quickly to get yours while you can.  Next month, I will be focusing on other aspects of our matting services, so keep coming back for more fun and information.  Click on the picture for a larger view.

Fake Magazine Calendars

My fakes can be funny or almost like real. You decide.

This post contains a fake magazine cover and story that I put together for an old friend of mine.  In this spoof, I provided a more elaborate look and feel for the inside pages of the magazine.  Many variations are possible, and if you want to spend more for a longer story, we can put that togther for you.  Custom work adds dimension to the basic idea.  Click on the picture to see a larger version of the piece. 

Fake Magazine Calendars

In this installment, I went for a humorous angle about a pet chicken one of my friends raised on their farm.  There are lots of ideas to take the idea of magazine spoofs to the next stage of development.  I like the humor twists, but we can provide something more serious if you want to do that kind of story.  Since the cover idea is such a phenomenon, it makes sense to keep the idea going with more depth.  Many people dislike writing almost as much as public speaking, so you can leave that chore to us.  There are plenty of places to have a cover made, but writing a story to go with it seems less prolific.  Click on the picture to see a larger version of the mock up.  In my next post, I will show an example of embellishing the inside pages.  This set of images would cost $6.

Fake Magazine Calendars

Take your magazine cover to the next level.

If you want me to create a unique or custom design from your photos or specifications, just send an email to jdir@bhotechnologists.com and tell me what you have in mind.  Please do not attach photos to your email.  I will tell you everything you need to know about how to start getting the most from your digital picture frame content.  If you want to use any of the work posted on this site, just pay $3 per image at how to buy matting services and then send me an email to let me know what you use or want to download.

When my grandson saw the first installment of fake magazine calendars, he wanted in on the act, so I made him a kid’s version of the idea.  He helped me put together the photo shots he wanted included in the expose, and wanted to be the first customer of the edition.  As these offerings evolve, input from customers will be important for the development of the ideas to come, even if there is only a subscription of one.  Here is the story of a bedroom basketball champion.

Fake Magazine Calendars

A cover story excites child's imagination.

Looking around the web, I have seen some buzz about creating fake magazine covers as gift ideas.  From what I have seen, users pour through a bunch of templates, write text, set pictures in the templates, then download.  Some of the sites let you do this for free, hoping that you will donate money to help keep the service free.  Here, I will just go straight for your payment, and offer you some angles that others do not.  First, using templates does not always look very good when the print for the fake cover is superimposed on the photo.  My custom work takes care of that problem.  Second, with templates you have to do a lot of work searching for the right cover layout, text, and composition.  My custom work will put you in charge, and let me do the work for you.  Third, after you have poured over all the templates, and done all the work the other sites leave to you, you wind up with a fake magazine cover that gets a quick chuckle.  With my work, you get the cover, an article related to the faked cover, and a layout that includes a calendar to mark when the story was made.   You also get a nice matting to enclose the package and enrich the look.

When you display the final magazine in your picture frame, you might get something like the example posted here.  Click on the picture to see a larger version.  Someone asked me about how to make the magazine part show up longer in the frame, so viewers could read the article.  If your frame timing sequence is too short to read the article,  you can duplicate the article image several times, rename each copy, then play the sequence where the article displays longer than the cover frame.  A sequence like the one shown here would run $6 to produce, so you would have a cover and a story to go with the headline.  Of course you could write the story yourself, or let me do something for you.  This idea could also incorporate an existing fake cover you have already picked up some place else, if you wanted to upload your image here.  Custom fakes can save you a lot of work, but you can get as involved as you want with the text and visual editing process, and that is the beauty of not having to work with rubber stamp templates.   What can I put together for you?

A note about posts on the site: Quality of posts on site are intentionally lower than actual products delivered to avoid copyright infringement. Actual products delivered in exacting resolution specified.  You don’t pay until proofs are approved!

Fake Magazine Calendars

Fake magazines make interesting gifts.

The trouble with using built in calendar functions in a digital picture frame is that you have to switch to calendar mode.  On my frame, the calendar mode is functional, but also quite boring when it comes to displaying photos.  I like to load in a group of photos and let them play without a lot of fiddling around with different modes on the frame.  This is why having digital calendar sequences and images that play in the mix with my other items on display work better for me than using a calendar mode.  A sequence like the one shown below can be loaded and viewed with my pictures, and cover the year’s worth of calendar pages in three images.  A sequence like this would run $9 and be a nice way to mark the months.

Calendar Sequences

Digital calendar pages are more interesting than calendar mode.

This post demonstrates one way to use calendars beyond the actual time they apply.  Matting portraits with calendar information can help to commemorate important events in your family life, such as birthdays, graduations, holidays, and other ideas surrounding important moments in time.  You can take some of the professional photo images you have of your children or grandchildren and create a new keepsake item as a gift or thoughtful remembrance.

Commemorative Portrait Calendars

Scanned photo used in composition.

There are lots of ideas for creating calendars around themes.  I can put together some from my own photos, but the real idea is for you to express your own creativity, and let your pictures do the talking.  In case you are not sure what I mean by theme calendars, this might include a central composition theme like trees, flowers, seasons, cities, landscapes, animals, children, or many other possibilities.  What kind of theme photos do you want me to highlight with a beautiful calendar creation from Matte Watch?  Today’s post could be part of a number of different themes.  You do not have to settle for just one idea.

Theme Calendars

Your photos deserve attention, so let us give them some TLC.

Men, it is coming to the time when sentiment peaks, and the ladies expect their emotional acknowledgement.  I am talking about Valentines Day.  Here is a way to show the woman your love for a month of Sundays and more.  Pitch her a nice calendar full of your monthly remembrance notes, and let the flowers last forever.  The design in this post would cost $36 for a year’s worth of pages.  If you want to use just the February page as a card,  that’s $3.  You can supply your own romantic text copy if you want to personalize the thoughts.  My wife enjoyed the image, and it was made from one of her pictures.  Of course, if the thought should occur, a Valentine calendar could be designed to work well for a woman to give to her sweetheart.  Many of the guys I know would like that kind of a gift, but they are usually not expecting it because they are too busy forgetting about Valentine’s Day in the first place.

Valentine Calendars

Keep the love going all year long with a Valentine Calendar.