Behind the scenes | 2017 calendar

  My 2017 calendars are now available in my shop!!  I have 3 versions and I am very proud of all 3.  A brand new style which is a "petite wall calendar" that is wire coil bound and hole punched to hang on the wall or a bulletin board.  And then my desk calendar, which has a black and white version and a color version.  My original intention was to go all black and white, but if you know me, I just can't stay away from more color.  I linked the calendars so you can take a look for yourself!

Thought I would share some of my process from this past year.

Here are all 12 of the final stamps.  I decided to make very intricately detailed stamp per month instead of carving multiple stamps per month as I have done in the past.

  First of all, you have to come up with some inspiration.  It was easy the first year, we had just moved down to Cali and we had so many varieties of fruit trees in our yard.  From the first calendar, everyone told me how much they loved the month of May which was full of peonies.  So, last year I did a floral calendar.  This year, my inspiration came randomly, and it was of the farmers market.  One of my very favorite places!!

Second, gather pictures.  Many I had taken previously, some I looked for online, and some I curated after purchasing some produce!  This led to some sneaky picture taking in stores and random stops on walks to get pictures!!

Found in Portland.

  Here are the famous sweet peas that I blogged about during the summer when I was trying to be ahead of the game! Trying is the key word.

  Next, you must carve stamps.  LOTS of stamps.  The final product included twelve, but there were some mess ups as well as stamps that I thought I would use and then had to redo when I went to stamp them on the calendar.

After you carve, you start stamping them onto the calendar pages!

  Then you realize you might not like only one color, so you ponder the idea of making MORE stamps.  Eek!  Fortunately, my sister talked me out of it.

Do you recognize this exact peony or the artichokes I used?

The infamous mushroom stamp!  Does it look like the picture I tried to be stealth about taking in Whole Foods?

  Then, you take a poll amongst some peeps and ask, "Black and white or Color?"  But you can't decide anyway, so you list both of them!

After you carve and get the stamps on the paper how you like, you have to start styling pictures for your Etsy shop.

  And then when you decide you want to do a wall calendar, you have to make your stamp images digital.  Don't ask me how I did it, I don't want you to know how ancient my graphic design skills are!  Seriously, I need to take a Photoshop 101 class.  Anyone want to do that with me?!

Then, when you finally get your images right, you seek the help of your talented sister who taught herself the ins and outs of photoshop.

  And you text her all night for multiple nights telling her how you want the color changed just slightly for the 100th time.  How about a lighter turquoise, no that's too blue, yeah, that's better, actually go back...  She was so patient with me!

And she creates images and turns them into calendar images for me.

  And after some research, ordering samples, waiting, and learning about bleed lines (oh, I really need to learn photoshop!), you anxiously wait and hope and pray that the order you just invested turns out okay.  And then that people buy them.  ;)

 Lastly, you enlist the help of your husband to cut you more blocks!  And his helper too!  Colorful Rogue plates absolutely necessary for this job.  Good thing he just got more!  ;)

Then you package up your desk calendar too and it's ready for sale!  Whew!!

  I am happy to say, that I have already figured out my theme for next year's calendar.  So I plan on starting in January.  I'm pretty sure I will hit crunch time next fall once again, but one can hope.

Thanks for following my calendar making journey!

Happy tuesday!