MY 2019 CALENDAR

In the past years, I've made calendars a few of those years. They are very labor and time intensive. So, if life is just too overwhelming, I don't end up making calendars.

This year, however, Stampin' Up! released a super cute stamp set called In Every Season (page 46 of the Annual Catalog) that begged to be made into a calendar. It is a set of 12 flower stamps that seem to be Flowers of the Month. Online there was a lot of confusion amongst Demonstrators as to what each flower was and which month it represented. Some of them were easily apparent. Others, not so much.

Anyway, as soon as I saw this set (before I was aware of all the confusion), I decided then and there that I would be making calendars this year, so I ordered it. Once it was calendar making time, I was faced, however, with figuring out some of the flowers/months.

Through extensive research, I finally accomplished this. As I introduce each month's page, I will add the flower's name. 

Before I introduce 2019 to you, I want to explain a little bit how I did these calendars. 

First of all, I decided on a total of eight calendars. I'm glad I didn't go with any more because these eight took me a few weeks to finish. 

Initially, I stamped each flower eight times in Memento Tuxedo Black ink on Whisper White cardstock. Keep in mind that 8 times 12 is 96. Yes, 96 flowers!

After the 96 flowers were stamped, it required a little more research so I could color each flower in its proper colors. I did the coloring with Copic Markers (I would have loved to have done the coloring with Stampin' Blends, but I didn't have enough of a variety of colors/shades to do the job correctly.) 

Once the 96 flowers were all colored, I fussy cut them, leaving a bit of white edge. Look at the size of these flowers -- imagine fussy cutting them! Some months were quite challenging, even leaving the white edges.

I printed out calendars from the Internet onto copy paper and carefully cut them apart by hand with scissors. I cut white cardstock to 3" x 4". I added each month page at the bottom of the cardstock piece. 

My intent was to just add the fussy cut flowers above the month. When I did that, they got completely lost. I debated for quite awhile as to how to alleviate that situation.

I finally came up with mounting them to a 1 1/4" square of lightish green, cut with the Stitched Shapes Framelits (page 220). It took quite a long time to die cut 96 little green squares. I had decided that for uniformity's sake to make the square the same color throughout the entire year.The green I chose was one that went well with all the shades of green in the foliage of the flowers.

Then I had to adhere the flowers to the squares. I liked the fact that the squares were a bit smaller than the flowers, allowing portions of each flower to extend beyond the box of the square.

Then the squares needed to be adhered to the top part of the 3" x 4" piece.

There! I had a January done! Only 95 more pages to go!

OK. Here we go:

January, Carnation

February, Violet

March, Jonquil

April, Tulip

May, Lily of the Valley

June, Rose

July, Water Lily

August, Poppy

September, Morning Glory

October, Calendula

November, Chrysanthemum

December, Poinsettia

I decided to go with small wooden easels to display the calendars. The entire year sets neatly on the ledge of the easel, and each passing month can simply be slipped to the back of the pile.

Relief once this huge project was completed. 

Annual

Smiles.