2025 desktop calendars

Yesterday I had lunch with friends and exchanged my last Christmas gifts of the season. Now that everyone has received the 2025 calendars I made, I can share them here. I made a total of nine calendars and three different designs.

The first three calendars I made had a postage theme. For each month I decided on images and created the "postage stamps" using stamps, dies, and punches from a variety of companies. I chose the card stock for the background and embossed it with an embossing folder (I used a different folder each month). I matted the calendar page with a coordinating card stock and adhered all the pieces to the background.

For the next batch of calendars (four in this group), I pulled out my stencils and blender brushes. For each month I cut a piece of white card stock and used 1/8" wide masking strips (from Gina K Designs) to mask off a white border. I created the stenciled backgrounds and removed the masking strips. I matted the calendar page with coordinating card stock, adhered it to the background, and added a stamped sentiment (either directly on the page or on a separate piece of card stock).

For the last two calendars, I decided to do watercolor animals. I chose an animal(s) for each month, stamped the pieces on watercolor paper using pigment ink, and colored them using ZIG Clean Color Real Brush markers. I also used a water brush to help blend the colors. When they were dry I cut out the pieces (I had dies for most of them, but a couple had to be hand-cut). I chose the card stock for each month and stamped a background and/or sentiment. I matted each calendar sheet with a coordinating card stock, adhered it to the background, and then added the watercolor pieces with foam tape.

I didn't end up finishing the last couple of calendars until a few days after Christmas. But they were still done before the new year, so all's good. :) And I have to say I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out.

Thanks for stopping by!

Handmade advent calendars

I have a friend who has made gifty advent calendars for her family for several years. It always seems like fun, so this year I decided to try making a couple, too. 

To make the base of the calendar, I used 2" x 2" square boxes. I ordered a pack of 50 boxes online, so I was able to make two calendars. I assembled each box (folding it on the scored lines) and used Scor-Tape to adhere groups of four boxes into columns. Then I glued six columns together to make a large "box" of 24 small boxes.

The package of 50 boxes also came with a little tag and a piece of twine for each box. I saved the twine for other projects, but I used the tags to number the boxes. I stamped the numbers 1 through 24 on some of the tags and then backed each one with a colored circle I punched out of red or green card stock.

To make the calendar more stable, I wrapped ribbon all around the outside and glued a piece of card stock to the bottom.

With the calendars assembled, I was on to the fun part of filling them. It was also a bit of a challenge -- the items obviously needed to be small, and I didn't want to go overboard with the cost. I decided to include a little Christmas message -- a silly joke, a quote, or an activity (e.g., make paper snowflakes, go for a drive to look at Christmas lights, etc.) -- for each day. I put a bit of festive paper shreds in each box, added the gift or treat, and put the message on top.

Below are photos of some of the items I included in the calendars.

These are items I made with things already in my craft stash. The flowers are glued on to office-type silver magnetic clips. The circle bookmarks open and have thin magnets inside so they don't fall out of your book. The rectangles at the bottom are pads of little Post-It Notes. I just used scraps of patterned card stock to make covers and some elastic thread and a flower for a closure. The miniature embroidery hoops are so fun. I considered actually stitching something for inside, but I didn't have time for that. Instead I used patterned paper that looks like stitching or quilting and just added a tiny button and bow in the middle. 

These are some of the items I purchased or already had. I also included tea sachets, shower steamers (little discs of aromatherapy powder that dissolve in the shower), a little heart trinket that made a pretty chiming sound, and of course chocolates. For each calendar I did four days that included two chocolates, and they were different brands/flavors each of those days.

Finally, I included a few crafty goodies in one of the calendars. A mini ink pad, sample jars of Paper Glaze, and a little bottle of Shimmer Splash were all the perfect size.

I know both recipients enjoyed opening a box each day to find a fun little surprise. I'm hoping to get the empty calendars back so I can refill them next year.

Whew! I managed to squeeze in one more blog post before the end of the year. Here's wishing you a gentle year of peace and kindness.

Thanks for stopping by!

Inspirational hearts

This year for Valentine's Day, I wanted to create a little something to share with the teachers and staff where I work. I didn't want to make more cards, though, and I wanted the gift to have some meaning. I decided on a collection of colorful hearts with inspirational words. Here are a few of my favorites:

To make the hearts I actually used the paper from cleaning off my brayer while gel printing. (Those scratch papers always look so pretty; I love finding a use for them.) I drew a few folk-style hearts on chipboard and cut them out to use as templates. I traced and cut out the colorful hearts, glued them onto coordinating card stock (a great way to use scraps!), and then trimmed off the extra card stock.

I used a variety of pens and paint markers to doodle a border on each heart then punched a hole with my Crop-A-Dile and added a loop of twine. I made a list of inspirational words and used a small alphabet stamp set to spell out the words on strips of white card stock. (Some of the words I stamped two or three times.) I trimmed the white card stock close to the letters and glued a word on each heart.

I made about 55 hearts, divided them into two containers and put one in the main office and one in the staff break room. I was nervous that no one would take one and it would end up being a silly idea, but most of them were gone by the end of the day, and there was only one left by Friday. Yay!

Thanks for stopping by!

2024 calendars: back to basics

Drum roll please ... here are the final two designs of my 2024 desk calendars. (If you missed the previous posts, I also made calendars with gel print backgrounds and in a collage style with scrapbooking products.) For these two designs I kind of went back to basics.

For the first design I cut sheets of white card stock into quarter sheets (4-1/4" x 5-1/2") and used various stamp sets to create the backgrounds. I splattered the backgrounds with metallic watercolor paint and matted each calendar page on coordinating card stock. I made two calendars in this design (they were basically identical, so I only took pictures of one), and they probably took me the longest -- I have a lot of stamps to choose from!

This final calendar was, in fact, the last calendar I made. I think it was Dec. 23, so I needed something quick and I was out of ideas. Finally I decided to pull out some 3" x 4" cards from a pocket scrapbooking kit. I chose a different patterned card for each month and six colors of coordinating card stock. I matted each card with card stock (using each color for two months), adhered the calendar in the middle of each page and then finished with a different embellishment.

I do like how this calendar turned out, but I still feel like it's too simple. Oh, well. I'll try to plan better for my holiday projects this year so I don't get so crunched for time.

And speaking of holiday projects, I do have my January Christmas cards done! I'll share those in my next post. Thanks for stopping by!

2024 calendars: scrapbook collage

As promised I'm back with two more 2024 desk calendars to share. The calendars I shared in my last post, made with gel print backgrounds, were clean and simple designs. For the collage-style calendars I'm sharing today, I used products from two 49 and Market scrapbooking collections: Nature Study (which coordinates with the card set I made a few months ago) and Spectrum Gardenia.

For the Nature Study calendar, I used the patterned card stock in the 6" x 8" Collection Pack for the bases. I cut six sheets in half to make twelve 4" x 6" pages. To embellish the pages, I used the General Laser Cut Elements. I also happened to have some washi tape with vintage postage-style images that happened to coordinate pretty well, so I added a couple of those "stamps" on each page. The final touch was colored enamel dots.

From the soft style and muted colors of Nature Study, we switch to bright hues and bold images in the Spectrum Gardenia collection. (And I love both styles equally.) I cut the 4" x 6" base pages from the card stock in the 12" x 12" Classics Collection Pack and then used the Ephemera Bits and Postage Washi Roll for accents. I embellished the pages with -- surprise! -- sequins.

And that's two more calendars down! I'll have one more post with my last two designs, and then we'll move on to other projects. If you have any questions about the calendars, just leave a comment. Thanks for stopping by!

2024 calendars: gel prints and quotes

Happy new year! I'm on my last few days of before I head back to school, and I've been busy in the craft room. I'm been focused on finishing up a bunch of card kits that have been hanging around (I used one for my January Christmas cards!), and yesterday I spent the day making gel press prints. But before I get too far ahead of myself, I still need to share the 2024 calendars I made as Christmas gifts.

I made eight different desk calendars for 2024, but I had six different designs, so I'm going to split them into multiple posts. Today I'm going to share the calendars I made using gel press prints and various quotes.

The first two calendars feature quotes from authors. I used the same basic layouts and quotes, but I switched the order of some of the quotes so I decided to include both versions in the pictures. Each photo has four calendar pages, two per month (e.g., January A, January B, February A, and February B). The die-cut quotes are attached with foam tape, and each page is embellished with three coordinating sequins.

For the third gel print calendar, I used quotes from the TV show "Friends." My sister and I love "Friends," and we often quote lines from the show to each other. So this seemed like a perfect theme for her calendar. (The downside is that the font is very small, so you might not be able to read all of the quotes in the photos.) I decided to stamp these images/quotes directly on the gel prints and then emboss them. Again, I finished each page with three coordinating sequins.

I know I didn't provide too many details (trying to keep this post from getting even longer), so if you have any questions, just leave a comment below.

Stay tuned for two more calendars in my next post. Thanks for stopping by!

Christmas ornaments

Happy holidays! I've clearly fallen behind on my blog posting this month. The couple of weeks before Christmas felt crazy, school was in session until Dec. 22, and I couldn't seem to get anything done. Now this week I've been lazy and doing as little as possible: lounging in my pajamas, reading, napping, etc. Maybe next week, with the new year, I'll start to get back into more of a "normal" routine. But for now, here is a quick post to share some Christmas ornaments I made.

The base of the ornaments (thin wooden circles) and the twine are from a craft store. I painted the ornament bases with acrylic paint -- at least two coats for each ornament -- and then splattered them with gold watercolor. (The background of the candle ornaments is more red in person; the photo came out very orange.)

While the bases were drying, I used a couple of die sets and various card stock colors to die cut different focal images. I know the mushrooms aren't very Christmas-y, but they were a special request from a friend. And I actually kept one of those ornaments because I really like how they turned out. :)

I adhered the die-cut pieces to the ornaments with liquid glue and foam tape. I used a permanent marker to write "Happy holidays" or "Merry Christmas" on the back, along with my name and the year. The last step was to add on the twine.

I actually made a second batch of ornaments with different colors and images, but I finished them at the very last minute, so I didn't get to take any photos. But the basic materials and process are the same. These also would be fun to make for other holidays or occasions -- or even to use as gift tags,

The next thing I have to share will probably be the desk calendars I made; I'm just not exactly sure when that will be. So thanks for stopping by, and if I'm not back before the end of the year, I hope you have a magical, marvelous new year!