Make This: 2013 Calender

I'm so excited to finally show you all my 2013 calender! I was supposed to post this on the 2nd but there was NO SUN to take any good pictures! For a week straight it was cloudy - I hate it when that happens. Actually the picture above was taken when it was still cloudy, but I had to just roll with it.

It was an easy, but slightly time consuming project. There are a lot of tutorials out there for the basic steps on how to do this, whether you're transferring to canvas or wood. This cute video is my favorite...so if you've never tried anything like this before you'll find all of the details there.

For this specific project I printed out the calenders (backwards!) and cut them to size. I found it easier to tape the tops of them onto the board to make sure that they were level first and that way I could move them around.

Once they're all in place it's easy to flip them up and put the gel medium below...then all you you have to is lay the calender back down and smooth it out. Thhheeennnn let it all sit over night.

The next step is the fun (and extremely frustrating, sometimes!)  part of getting all of the paper off of the wood. You will simply need to saturate the wood and start to rub it all off. I went one month at a time and it took quite a while. Note: I used more of the gel medium than I really needed because I wanted to really make sure that it soaked up the ink. Because of this I had to use a sander to get some of the extra residue off at the end.

I gave myself about 2 inches in between calenders to add the months at the top. Basically, just complete all of the steps above again for the names. Easy!!

Here are the fonts that I used:

Calender: Baskerville Old Face (comes pretty standard with most programs - did not download)

Months: Signerica (bold)

Year: Ribbon

I did this same thing last year for the individual months, except that I used a color background and white for the type. This could be a cute idea for a wedding gift! Make sure to put the year on it and change the specific day of the wedding to a heart (see above on September 20th for our anniversary!) It's best to sand and seal the project once you're done to finish it off.

focus: a word for 2013

Last year was the first year that I chose a ''word'' for the year. A word that described everything that I wanted the coming year to teach me....it was "self-sufficient". Maybe I cheated a little bit on the hyphen, but whatever. I'm not sure if I succeeded, but there were definitely days that pushed me into this and days that pushed me right back to where I started. I'm a very dependent person by nature, and I always have been....but I think what I realized was that sometimes its okay to need someone. On the other hand its good to have enough confidence in yourself to know that you can fill in the blank on your own. I wasn't very conscience of this as I was going through the year - honestly, I pretty much forgot that I chosen a word at all. This makes me think that maybe my word for this coming year should be ''intent'' - close, but not quite right. 

Focus.

This coming year I want to keep a steady focus.  I want to focus on my health, on my marriage, on my relationship with God. I want to focus on each day and not just "big picture'' things. I do want to live with intent, but I want it to be more than that. I want to do things because I chose to do them, not because they happened to me. I want to be proactive and not so reactive. This may sound silly to some of you, but for me its probably one of the hardest things for me to overcome.

I am pressing forward into 2013.... I have big plans and dreams and I'm feeling extremely optimistic.