calendars – Stamped Smiles

Hello friends! How are you dealing with the 2022 year so far? I hope that you have a fantastic start and look forward to a brilliant and crafty future ahead of you! Speaking of starting a New Year, I realized that I needed to start my crafty calendars…which really should’ve been started sooner!🙄 I actually enjoy putting them together, especially the coloring as it’s very relaxing for me.

I’ve had this set of calendar cards along with this stand since this last Spring from Taylored Expressions and of course I’ve waited until recently to get them finished up! I’m glad I did though as I think these will be so fun to look at and chuckle to change out each month:

Tee hee! What got me interested in Taylored Expressions from the start were these adorable and funny Grumpy characters that she has in one of her product lines! (You may have seen a “Grumpy” calendar I’ve made in the past on THIS POST.) She has LOTS of different types of calendars and accessories to choose from, but this is a set that had came out this past year. Check out all of calendar products at Taylored Expressions HERE. I thought this would be a fun way to help motivate me this year for creative inspiration!😁

I’ve taken a white piece of cardstock cut to size my calendar stand that would accommodate the tear-off calendar pad and hold the “snarky cards” in place with the gold clip. I’ve used some TE inks and blender brushes to blend over top of the white piece. I then used the TE Striped Squares stencil to go over it using the same colors and then mounted this piece over a black cardstock layer. (This piece and the changeable cards are held to the stand with the gold clip.)

Here are all of the completed cards in the set that I can change out each month or whenever I want. I’ve used the TE Clipboard Calendar Cards-Snarky for my own personal calendar that I’ve colored up with Copic markers. The frames were colored with coordinating colors that matched up with the rainbow stenciled background for my calendar front. Really enjoyed coloring and giggling while making this set!

I also wanted to show you the back side of this TE Walnut Wood Clipboard Stand so that you can see how I store all of the extra cards on my calendar when I need to change one out. You can choose to add a package of the TE Calendar Storage Sleeves with the stand if you get one, but I thought this whole system was a nice and sturdy option of creating a calendar that you can personalize for yourself or for a gift. I ended up creating a calendar last year for Mother’s Day and gave it as a gift. I used the TE Clipboard Calendar Cards-Sweet for that one and did some foiling on them. (Just don’t forget to purchase the next year’s tear-off calendars to replenish the recipient for next year!)

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And I also wanted another calendar for my computer area which also brings a smile to me each month! I bought a calendar set last year from Inky Stamper and really enjoyed flipping the cute characters each month as the year went on. Happily, she came out with another new calendar set for this year and I happily purchased it BEFORE it ran out! (So sadly, it sold out quickly!)

With these calendar kits, the stand, the monthly calendar cards as well as all of the pattern paper strips, stamped and die cut characters and sentiment strips ALL come with this kit! I think it’s a pretty good bargain for all that was included with it. Of course you have to color and put together each card…but THAT’S what the fun is about!

And here’s a look at the entire set of calendar cards that I colored and put together. There were instructions for each card along with the Copic markers used in the examples. For some of the cards, I already owned the stamp set, so I added a few extra details to some of them and I also added a few of my Inky Stamper Gems and Sequins mixes to some of them. Square dots and a strip of gold enamel dots were also included to decorate with.

So I had an awesome time putting this one together as well! I look forward to seeing these every single month throughout the entire year!

Since I had a couple of left over Taylored Expressions 2022 Tear-Off calendars, I thought it would be fun to just create a “calendar card stand” for crafters and give them out to whoever wants one!

EDITED UPDATE: All of the calendars have been claimed! Sorry if you’re looking to get one as I have no more left. Hope everyone enjoys their calendar all crafty year!

So I had 5 of these calendars left over and I knew I wasn’t going to use them, but of course I didn’t want to just throw them out either! So I took the TE Big Grumpy Bear and the TE Big Grumpy Cat sets to help motivate a fellow craft friend throughout the year! TEE HEE! I’ve made a rainbow colored background for these by taking the TE Art From the Heart background stamp and stamping it with black over a white piece of cardstock. I used some TE ink and blender brushes to blend in the rainbow colors. I stamped an extra background image to color in some of the images and fussy cut them out for accents.

I attached the “Grumpies” over the background and layered the calendar with a black layered piece behind it to go over top of the “Grumpies” with their “feet” underneath so you can see them. I then added the fussy cut out images that I colored in a corner of each one.

I made a “stand” for this by creating a valley fold piece to attach in between the top folding A2 black card base. This will make for a permanent stand to display your calendar through the year! (And hopefully motivate someone’s crafty process through the year too!❤) I receive so much inspiration from many of you crafty friends, so it would be nice if I could possibly reciprocate that in some way!

Check out each one of these calendars I’ve made below in detail! Just click on the photos to enlarge them if you’re on my website:

So now that we’ve got the year started and in place, let’s hope for a really creative and productive one ahead!

I have some more craft projects that I’ve been working on as well as a really BIG craft project that I’m taking on for the love and excitement of it all! I look forward to sharing with you soon!

Thanks for stopping in and I wish you a happy, healthy and productive rest of your week!

Challenges:

Sweet Stampin’ – NEW (stamped New Year calendars with new products!)
Critter Crazy – Anything Goes + critter
Creative Inspirations – Anything Goes
River of Creativity – Anything Goes
Penny’s Paper-Crafty – Anything Goes using paper
CRAFT – New (New Year calendars with new products!)
Creative Fingers – Anything Goes
Colour Crazy Craft – Anything Goes + coloring

Hello friends! We are already here on the last Thursday of August! I can’t believe we are already getting close to the end of the year soon! Time seems to just go by so fast for me anymore!

Today stars a brand new challenge over at Cute Card Thursday and for this week we’d like to see your “Anything BUT a Card” creations! We look forward to seeing what you all come up with!

So I bet you thought that I had forgotten about my finishing up those calendars? Well as soon as I saw that this was the last week of the month, I went to try and find the next month and of course it wasn’t there! LOL! Then I realized that I needed to finish out these “Grumpy” calendars for the remainder of the year! To see the past months I had already created, you can find all the posts by CLICKING HERE. I had so much fun with these! So here’s the last of them:

I think these are fairly quick and easy to do, plus they’re so much fun putting together by creating the scenes for them and they give me giggles everytime I look at it! (There are days that we can relate to these guys, right?!)

Again, for all of these, I have used the Taylored Expressions 3×4 Calendar panels with the printed design at the top. (of course mine are the 2019, but if you click on the link, it will take you to the 2020 calendars!) I have slightly cut the edges off so that I could make a layered panel behind them and still keep the 3×4 size.

All images came from the Taylored Expressions Calendar Grumplings stamp set and coordinating dies. I’ve used the sentiment from the set and made a banner with it that I’ve tucked underneath the elements from the Build-a-Scene Calendar dies. I’ve colored all the critters with Copic markers.

The eyeballs on this dude are too funny! I’ve white heat embossed the sentiment on this one over black to mimick a chalk board. I added lines around the edges with a white gel pen. I’ve popped up the grumpling with foam tape. I’ve added some glossy accents over the apple in his hand. This is my birthday month too!! Woo hoo!

BWHAA! HAA!! This one is probably my fave not just because of the sentiment and the cute grumpling, but I love Halloween anyway. I stamped the sentiment over some yellow cardstock and then punched it out with a circle punch so it looked in the shape of a moon and then die cut a couple of clouds to go around it. I had a punch that punched out lots of stars and so I glued those on the background. His broom handle was colored with a purple glitter gel pen and the frame was cut from some purple Glitterstock.

Oh yes, all of those leaves pile up about this time and there’s always tons of yard work to clean up along with all of those dead flowers before winter gets here…this is usually how I feel about it too! The leaves at the bottom are from a sequins mix that I had. I do love the different colors of leaves in the Fall!

Last, but not least is this funny “Bah Humbug” grumpling! Things tend to get hurried this time of year for sure and by the time the end of the month rolls around, that’s about my take on it! LOL! I’ve used some white Nuvo Drops for the snow in the background. The ground was die cut from Glitterstock. The sentiment was punched out with a really old speech bubble punch I have.

I hope you’ve enjoyed catching all of the months of this year’s calendar with me as much as I had fun putting them together. Now, the trick is to pull out the 2020 calendars and start working on that earlier than just as the time gets here! LOL! Thanks for hanging in there with me for it! Hopefully you’ve been inspired in some way or at least had a few smiles with the process!

Now please do pop on over at the Cute Card Thursday blog to see what the rest of the design team has for inspiration and play along with us this week!

Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges: