Looking ahead to 2020

Why hello everyone! Today I will be showing you how I took some Christmas clearance decorations and turned them into adorable calendars. I will be trying to sell these calendars at craft fairs later this year so they will be 2020 calendars. 2020 seems like waaaaaaay in the future, but actually it's next year which is mildly terrifying.

The day after Christmas, my mother and I hit up some sales and I bought 6 of these little blocks for less than a dollar each at Hobby Lobby. I liked that they already had a clip attached to the top of the block and that the base of the block was white which could be easily changed or painted.

The first step on these blocks was to get the price stickers off of the back. I poured a small amount of Goo Gone directly on the back of the block and let it sit about 10 minutes. Then I was able to peal the majority of the stickers off and wipe away the remaining Goo Gone.

Next it was time to sand down the blocks a bit. I 100% know that I have a few pieces of sandpaper in the apartment somewhere, but after 10 minutes I couldn't find them and was getting annoyed so I decided to ruin a nail file instead. I sanded some of the edges of the blocks to give them a more worn look and sanded away any remaining adhesive left from the stickers.

Next I tried to plan out the looks I was going for with the calendars. I originally was going to make 2 blocks each of the 3 different styles and here are the paper/accessories I had picked out for the three styles:

I did end up going a bit rogue and switching up the blocks a bit from what I had originally planned when I actually started making them, but I wanted to show you the original ideas I had. After planning was painting. I painted the blocks to go with the blue paper a very light blue. Shocking! I know! I used purple for the unicorn blocks and then attempted to make my own rose-gold/orange shade to go with the shiny orange paper. I also used the same method to paint all of the blocks: I spread some paint on with a paintbrush and then dabbed some paper towel at the paint to make it look a bit aged and splotchy. Here is what one of the orange-ish blocks looked like all done. 

This is where I veered off track a little and changed up the styles that I had originally planned for the blocks. I ended up not using the original unicorn stickers as they were puffy, dimensional stickers and I didn't think they matched well with the style of the block. I found some paper that I liked and cut out some unicorn images from that. For the second magical themed block I went off the rails and covered the front with blue glitter paper to simulate water and then added a mermaid and narwhal sticker. I think these blocks would be great in the room of a little girl or boy who loves magic!!!!

For the orange blocks I ended up not using the silvery paper I had originally paired with it. It seemed like too much shimmer going on all at once. So I decided to just add some of the orange shimmer paper to the block itself and then put some antique-looking butterfly stickers as a decoration. I also added some smaller orange sparkle accents because I enjoy sparkles and used the tips of my scissors to scuff up the orange paper to give it the look of older metal. These two blocks are my favorite of all 6! I love how these came out so much.

And finally we have the blue blocks. I actually used the silver paper I didn't end up using on the orange blocks and incorporated it onto the blue blocks. I added some silver number stickers to say "2020" and some blue sparkle accents and the blue blocks were done!

So these are not 100% finished. As we get closer to craft fair season when I will actually be trying to sell these, I will be printing out small monthly calendars for 2020. I will cut them out and stack them up in order and clip them into the top of the block. As the months progress, people can simply remove the sheets for the months that have passed and reveal the new months! Let me know what you guys think in the comments below!

​ - Rebecca