Using images to display the_date

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to display the_date using images. The reason I want to use images is for stylized text made in photoshop. The closest I can get is to surround the_date with an img tag, but I don’t feel like making 365 unique images!!!

btw, this is only supposed to show once above the posts for the respective day, so I cannot use any hacks for the_time.