It’s been over 20 years since a humorous calendar was circulated at work. It was supposed to be Martha Stewart’s December calendar. As we all know, Martha Stewart has been synonymous with being super organized and super creative.

For a few years, I have shared the contents of that calendar a day at a time from December 1 leading up to Christmas Day. In fact, friends often ask in advance if I am going to share the calendar again.

As we speak, all two-dozen days are scheduled. I don’t have to do a thing between now and Christmas to bring these daily chuckles to you. Not only that. It took me less than 10 minutes total to get it ready. Ten minutes once a year. Not bad.

The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, yes I will be sharing this content again. Secondly, I want to tell you about the process I used to make it easy. Your project may not be creating two-dozen picture quotes for the Christmas season, but you will likely want to make a set of picture quotes at some point.

It starts with PowerPoint…

We have a number of options for creating picture quotes. Canva and PicMonkey have been go-to tools for many people. I have recently become fond of Adobe Express. If you are making a single quote and speed is the primary consideration, one of those three may be your option.

For me, nothing beats the flexibility of PowerPoint.

1. I began the project by creating a new PowerPoint presentation and duplicating slides until I had 25 blank ones.
2. The next step was to select pictures. My favorite source for pictures at this point is Pixabay.com. Their selection is large and easily searchable. The images have no copyright or Creative Commons restrictions. The price is right…free. Download a few wintertime pictures to the desktop.
3. Drag each photo to a blank PowerPoint slide. It doesn’t matter if the photo takes up the entire area of the slide.
4. Insert a text box in the first slide. Type the text for the first slide. If the background of the slide is white and the image is light, choose a black font. If your text box will be inserted over a dark image, select a white font.
5. Rather than inserting a new text box into each slide, I suggest clicking on the edge of the first text box (so the four corners are highlighted) and copying the text box. Paste it into each slide one after the other until you have the whole set completed.
6. Edit the text in each text box.
7. Save the PowerPoint slide deck.

Turn the slides into separate files…

1. Return to the first slide. Use the Windows snipping tool to capture each image. Click the upper left corner of the image (not the slide, but just the image) and drag to the right and down until the image has been selected. Save it to the desktop.
2. Continue with each slide. Snip and save each one to the desktop.

Schedule with Hootsuite…

1. Compose some small piece of text that is going to appear with all of your quotes. I entered “Martha Stewart’s Holiday Planning Calendar #holidayhumor” as the text in Hootsuite. I then highlighted and copied it so I could use it again and again throughout the set. If you are composing a set of motivational quotes, you might use the hashtags “#motivation #inspiration” throughout.
2. Drag your first picture quote into the window in Hootsuite.
3. If you want the picture quotes to appear on both Twitter and Instagram, click the “pin” next to each of those icons. That way, you won’t have to select them again for the other quotes.
4. Set a date and time for your first picture quote.
5. Save.
6. Repeat the process until all of your picture quotes have been scheduled.

Prepare for next year…

1. Your picture quotes have been scheduled! Now it’s time to do the cleanup that will allow you to find and repurpose your work.
2. Create a new folder on the desktop.
3. Drag all of your picture quotes to the folder.
4. Drag the PowerPoint slide deck to that folder.
5. Drag the entire folder to some logical place in your digital filing system.
6. Prepare your trigger. In mid-November each year, I want to be reminded to schedule the Martha Stewart picture quotes. Create a repeating task in your digital task manager which reminds you of where your picture quotes are located.

Picture quotes are fun…

People like quotes. When I post a quote, it tends to get more engagement than anything else. Making it a picture quote increases the engagement. You probably have a favorite set of quotes. In no time, you could turn them into a nice set of picture quotes you could share with others.