2023 Half-Sheet printables to decorate yourself

Well. We are so close now that I am fairly vibrating with excitement. Litter trays ordered (that will be an adjustment for sure) and scratching posts and special diet cat food. Blimey. And yes, my mind is very much elsewhere. If I am honest, I feel like Dear Son is going to be so jet-lagged I might actually get plenty of time at my desk LOL! We shall see.

But here, briefly, is the larger Decorate-It-Yourself 2023 set to print. The calendar block is right down near the bottom so there is loads of space at the top for decoration.

My plan is to do gel prints on them, but really, you could add a photo, you could add stamping or pretty paper or any other thing that strikes your fancy. Let you kids draw pictures on the top even. Where the 3×4 versions are pretty small and don’t have room for much, these have a decent 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 area – give or take, depending on the number of weeks. I only managed one or two (and only really love one of them LOL!) but you can see what I mean!

As ever, I would be really pleased to see how you have used them!

Now, I must go over the final list of things for Darling Daughter’s birthday party tomorrow. Really, could se have any fuller a week? I doubt it and I am really hoping that MAYBE by the end of next week we can begin to exhale. At least until Thanksgiving, all the skating comps and the Christmas Ice show and the run up to that big holiday in December.

No rest for the wicked…

Working on deleting the calendars – but here are some new ones!

Dear Son + Cat arrive on MONDAY and there is likely to be a whole week of me sharing old projects or things I feel should maybe be dragged up from the depths of my blog and given some time in the light once again. But for today I have a new 2023 calendars for you.

As I have been deeply immersed in my gel plate play at the moment, I thought I would go back to an older idea and try to incorporate the gel plate and my calendar printables together. At first I began playing with my circles.

I had a go at decorating some of those by masking off the printed text area and pulling a print on the whole area. I got to use one of my favourite wallpaper texture plates from a very long time ago, and it still works.

I could have had a lighter touch withthe paint and the impression would have been much clearer I think. Some of the others:

And of course they fit nicely in a CD case – download the PDF here!

I have ALSO been looking at the DIY ones and thinking something more along the lines of the faux letterpress ones would be a better idea – more room to decorate!

I will share one of those for tomorrow!

2023 2 inch Circle punch calendars – a request!

I think the last time I made these might have been back in 2017 but I got a request and as I have already made 2023 calendars all the resources were already there!

Don’t grab the image, download the file for the right print size! I did check and double check but LMK just in case I got it wrong. 😀

WOYWW 656- but still a calendar one sheet!

Happy nearly-2022 WOYWW to all. An obligatory desk shot, but as I am working on a different desk it’s very boring, I’m sure. Sorry about that.

The other desk is not so much a desk as a deskTOP.

The Hubster listened to me moan and complain for months about my fear of losing the program that I love when I eventually have to give up my 2009 Mac Mini running (wait for it) el Capitan! Word is that the newest OS breaks my program. My clever hubby hunted thru his old Mac Mini stash to find the best one and gave me the gift of upgrading it to Catalina (and making it work) for Christmas. It took days. It is a slight struggle, like any change is, but overall it’s fab. The only thing that totally broke is the Cricut running SCAL (also from 2009 LOL!) but the old mini will get hooked up to the Cricut so I can carry on using that when I need to. I don’t feel like I need a new cutter, so I’ll be happy with that.

One other gift to share is a tee shirt from my darling daughter. She knows what I like LOL!

To make up for my boring desk, I have an unusual landscape version of my 2023 one-sheet calendars for you. Hope you will find it useful!

And normal WOYWW will likely resume next week, although I am toying with the idea to take a week off. Actually, I’m toying with a few things for 2022 but so far nothing is settled….yet.

Happy New Year, if I don’t see you again before the next WOYWW!

Another Most-requested – the Doily Calendar 3x4s

This design was one of the first ones that I did that got picked up, year after year, by calendar blogs. So many of them list 10 or 20 or 25 or 50 printable calendars and many of them listed this one. If I don’t make it I get asked again and again. Only the Pretty CD Circle one is nearly the same for requests and downloads.

And I have done the 2023 version as well. I have been asked for 2024 and 25 as well, but that won’t come for a while!

The last WOYWW before Christmas tomorrow! How time flies…

Calendars – DIY Spanish Sunday to Saturday only!

Well. I had planned a few calendar posts out, to free up my time to spend with family, but once I posted that I may no longer be able to make them if I upgrade my Mac and lose my program, I started getting comments and emails from people asking for very specific things far into the future. I had a request for 2024 and 2025! Yikes. The thing is, once I make the month blocks and check them a few times to make sure they are correct (who remembers the set I made with an online calendar that was WRONG? Thank goodness I could like to it’s wrongness LOL!) then making the calendars themselves is not hard. And it is pretty speedy if I don’t mess about with the fonts. I have my favorites but some of them are tricky to line up, especially if they are a bit … bouncy, IYKWIM. So making another 2 years will take a bit of time. And once I do one, I’ll get loads of requests to convert all of them for those two years. No time to do that now.

So, I had a request from a long time Calendar fan from Uruguay. It’s interesting, because unlike many Spanish speaking countries, they use the Sunday to Saturday format (which is the one I make most often) rather than Monday to Sunday. Making the Spanish ones for her isn’t hard, just a little editing each block to replace the English with the Spanish. But I expect one people see it I am going to start getting requests for the Monday to Sunday version – which requires heavy editing of the blocks. And so on and so on and so on…

So here are the requested Spanish DIY calendars. Making the CD sized ones size ones was easy enough so I did it. CD one first – there are very faint grey lines for the cutting, but as usual you could cut the sheet in half and trim so the block is centred and decorate the whole outside. This uses the circle CD calendar but you get the idea!

The CD sized ones are two-to-a-page

I’ve shown decorating them 100 times so I won’t again. Anything from a strip of patterned paper to a major ink&stamp job can be used.

Enjoy.

Tomorrow, the Doily 3×4 cards – another oft-requested one, for 2022 and 2023.

Calendar for 2022-2023 – Pretty CD Circle

I am going to add sets of 2022-2023 calendars over the next few weeks, every Saturday. I am focusing on the ones that are most popular over the years, beginning with the Pretty Circle CD calendars.

The 2022 Pretty CD Circle has already been shared, but I will add the image and the link to save you hunting for it:

Here is the 2023 version – download it here:

Next week, the DIY (both CD and 3×4 versions!)

Last calendars for 2021 – pretty cherry blossom one-sheets

As I mentioned yesterday, this is the last calendar I am doing for 2021. While one-sheets are still useful for the planner folk, I feel like I have added enough of them at this point that there will be one that will suit you, if you come looking. I’ll plan to update the page in the header that lists links to all of them, but you can also just plug in 2021 (or 2022 even!) in the search bar and all the posts should come up.

I quite like this one and use it myself. You can download the two-page PDF with both the 2021 and the 2022 versions.

Hope you find it useful! And here is my 100 days page for today. From next week yo will get two on a Monday and I’ll be lazing around with the family on Sundays! I’ve added a stamped element and am considering making at least the OPTION to do that a part of the project. Ideally I will be adding a stamp that I have either NEVER or very RARELY used. This may be one of my favourites so far…

Planner calendars – many sizes, up to you

Firstly, here is the calendar I have for you today. By request.

And a close up of one of the pages – I call it my Washi Tape calendar, cause the little colourful banners are meant to evoke washi tape (DUH!) Here is a sample – I am bored of always adding JANUARY as the sample LOL!

It is interesting, to me, if no one else, that my blog has a bit of the multiple personality thing going on. I suspect the most popular blogs focus on ONE THING, so their audience knows when they visit, what they see will be of interest. Makes sense, right? Clearly, I never got that memo LOL!

I have a widely diverse audience. I have not posted an actual post about book folding templates in ages, yet literally every day I get requests, via email or comment, for a custom template. I still provide them. My (hidden, by request only) DASH diet planner gets a handful of requests every week. I have a very old post about starting Tunisian crochet so it doesn’t roll and THAT gets 10+ hits every week, as does the post about my no-sew knitted heart in the round and my Bobby Buddy pattern for charity teddies. What I post most NOW is art journal stuff and that rarely gets hits or comments, except on WOYWW days. What does it all mean? Who knows? But it is interesting to me, as the blogger.

The OTHER thing I get a lot is a request to update some old calendar I made. I still do them every year, mostly cause it’s kinda fun, but it always amazes me which calendars people like. Sometimes I will get a request for a certain size, but usually it seems people just look for the size they want and get that. But if you explore your printer dialog box (the pop up that displays when you try to print somethig) you might find you can use ANY calendar and print it in the size you want!

First, look at the page size. You can pick many different sizes for printing, to match your paper size. If the file is a PDF, your printer will scale it to fit that size (the options to tick for that are hidden in the image by the drop down menu) without loss of quality, which means you can print a PDF on A4, US letter, A3 or an index card if you want and can load that paper size into your printer.

If you like the look of a calendar (or indeed any printable) designed for a large 3-ring or 4 ring binder calendar, but need a smaller 1/2 sheet size for that size planner, your dialog box will show you the way!

You can better see the scale-to-fit options here. As you can see this will print two of each page of the PDF, but you can mix selections – in my dialog box I can pick the number of pages to a printed sheet as well. Picking two will give you 1/2 sheet planner size prints. Picking six or nine will give you blocks that would work for tear-offs or desk calendars

I have not tried it but it is possible you can cut a multi-page print with a border to fit Project Life sleeves.

I have posted about this a few times before and while I can only offer instructions for a Mac, I know in my heart that Windows machines will have the same options, even if they look a little different. So if you see a printable, be that a calendar, a planner page, some home schooling tool, whatever, that is not the exact size that fits your needs, explore your printer options and see – it just might solve the problem!

Little Book project form my painted papers

I had fun with this. I have been thinking that I should do more actual mail and less email for things like birthdays and the like. Also just sending mail in general, to brighten up someone’s day. And I thought of the old Birthday Book idea – a book to house all the birthdays across the year to remind yo to make and mail a card. So I decided to make a small one, using the scan of my painted paper. My teaser from yesterday:

As I linked, the idea was on Angela’s blog originally, although I have seen it before, years ago, in a mixed media class from … Interweave, I think it was. Basically you can take any rectangle of paper – my paper was A3 but I printed the scan as borderless A4, twice.

It is just a few folds, one cut and then some strategic glueing – at least my version is like that. I think the original creates 8 pages in an accordion style where mine makes 5 leaves in book style. Let me explain.

First fold your paper in half, both lengthwise, then open and fold in half widthwise:

Next, fold the sides in to the middle to make a total of four columns and two rows, or eight sections – the brown lines are the previous folds, the white lines the new folds

Make your single cut, along the centre line but only until the beginning of the last (fourth) section

Fold the final section so the “pages” are back to back like so:

I chose to re-fold the scores and glue the pages to create a booklet. I then made a second and glued the first page from one and the last page from the second together to make a thicker booklet:

Hopefully that makes sense.

So the other day I had a request to re-do and old (2015) calendar for 2021. In looking back thru my files I saw a 2021 one-sheet calendar that I thought had the right sort of colours to work with this booklet.

I printed it and cut apart the month blocks to use on the pages, along with one of the journaling block stamps I unearthed the other week.

You can see they work nicely on the booklet from an A4 sheet. I also printed the painted paper scan 2-to-a-page to make the cover.

I messed up the first January and my second attempt I printed the 2020 version – I do NOT want to revisit that year for sure. My final booklet does have the correct month on it. And now the download is only the 2021 calendar so you can’t make the same mistake I did LOL!

Just the cover to decorate. I’ll make sure I get it done before WOYWW 😀

This has been fun – I will do it again, I’m sure, and have lots of ideas for the sheets I make – although I love using them as printed versions so I get to keep the originals. A Hoarder, you say? ME? nahhhhh.