Hello lovelies! Here’s another 2012 calendar — this time it’s for your desk! I made a similar set of these calendars for my girlfriends for Christmas this year and now I’m sharing them with you!

Unlike the simplistic 2012 wall calendar I posted last month, this desk calendar needs a bit of assembly.

You will need: one 11×17″ cardstock, seven sheets of 11×17″ printer paper, a glue stick, glue gun, a glass mat (or some protected work surface because there will be cutting and gluing involved), scissors or craft knife, a ruler, and two small binder clips.

First, download a copy of the desk calendar. Print on 11×17″ paper at 100% to maximize the size of the calendar. Using your craft knife and ruler, carefully cut along the dotted line on the template. You can also go freehand and use scissors if you feel confident enough to cut nice straight lines.

Now cut the 11×17″ cardstock in half (long-ways). You should end up with two 5.5×17″. Score the first piece of cardstock 1.25″ from the top and bottom, and fold both ends in the same direction.

You should end up with something that looks like this:

Now score the second piece of cardstock 1.25″ from the bottom, and fold it in. Turn the cardstock around and score 1.25″ from the bottom, and fold it in. You should end up with something that looks like this:

Now, grab your glue stick! Take the first piece of card stock (with the top and bottom folded) and the sheet of paper with the back of the calendar. Apply glue to the top fold and carefully align the back of the calendar over it.

Take your time and work in small sections to get the back of the calendar glued to the cardstock.

Now you’re ready to glue the calendar together. With your glue gun, apply glue to the back of the first cardstock.

Press the bottom of the second cardstock over the glue. You should end up with something like this:

Now apply glue with your glue gun on the top end and connect the tops together.

Take your small binder clips and clip the loose sheets of calendar months together at the top.

You should end up with a cute desk calendar that will surely stand out from the rest.

Enjoy!

Hello lovelies! It’s about that time of year for new calendars! Last December, I designed a set of customizable, printable, and best of all, free Pocket Calendars for 2011. I made it as a gift for all my friends last Christmas with a collage of our photos, and they loved it!

I want to design something totally different for 2012. I was looking around for ideas and found this cute set of wallpapers from DeskCity. What I love most about these illustrations is how much the dog reminds me of my old girl, Dolly!

So for 2012, I’ve decided to keep my design simple but big enough to write notes n’ such while matching the theme of the illustrations. My fellow paper-craft-challenged readers rejoice! Because there is no assembly required for this poster-sized wall calendar! Just download the 13-Month Wall Calendar (PDF) and print out the month you need. Tabloid 11×17″ is preferred but you can scale it down to fit on legal-sized cardstock if needed. Enjoy!

Illustrations borrowed from DeskCity.
13-Month Wall Calendar (PDF) created by me.
For personal use only.
Do not redistribute or sell for profit.

I found a great tutorial on how to make A Quick & Easy White Box (Light Box) for Product Photography by Jason Tomczak. The tutorial recommended near-perfect CFL lights that have a color temperature of 5000 or 5500 but I used the light bulbs that came with the clip lamps I bought from Staples ($12.99) because I was too lazy to make a trip to my nearest hardware store… So some of the pictures turned out a little orange, but nothing a little photoshop can’t fix Here are some test shots I took after I finished constructing the light box.

Jaxon was trying to snatch the little teddy bear when I wasn’t looking, hehe! He’s such an attention whore!

I got a little bored of taking pictures of inanimate objects so I started taking pictures of our dogs. Its been a while since they’ve had their pictures taken

I’ve attended a lot of baby showers this year — six and counting! So you probably think I’m used to the baby gift shopping by now right? Wrong! I stress out every time I hear about a baby shower. The first few times was fun… putting together basketful of baby essentials like baby bibs, bottles, pacifiers, onesies, receiving blankets, etc. But after a while, I start stressing over what to buy to make the next basket of goodies unique from the previous baby shower.

So last week, for my friend Cindy’s baby shower, I decided to mix it up and made a baby diaper cake. Most people see diaper cake making as a difficult task, but it doesn’t have to be that way. If you can get the foundation built right and sturdy, the rest is a piece of cake! But I have to be honest, a good looking diaper cake costs a lot of money. Expect to spend around $100 for a nice diaper cake!

To build a diaper cake you will need:

• At least 50 diapers. I avoid diapers with prints because I like my cake plain. It makes it a lot easier to dress up with colorful goodies.
• Rubber bands of all sizes to hold the individual diapers and also the tiers of the cake.
• 16″ round disposable cardboard for the base to hold the cake.
• 2 long baby bottles. This will be used to hold the tiers of the cake together.
• Glue spots or double sided tape.
• Ribbons. Preferably of two different color and sizes for contrast.
• Cake topper: Stuffed animal, baby shoes or flowers.
• Goodies to decorate the cake.

First, we roll the diapers. Have your diapers and rubber bands ready!

The diapers I found had green stripes on the edges. In order to hide the edges, I carefully tucked the green stripes into the fold of the diaper. I couldn’t hide the stripes completely, but you won’t notice the stripes unless you are looking directly down on the roll.

Now roll the diaper from the waistband to the middle.

Secure the roll with a loose rubber band. You just want to hold the shape of the roll, don’t create a permanent rubber band imprint on the diaper!

Once you have 6 diapers rolled up, you can start forming the foundation of the cake.

With a baby bottle in the middle, secure the 6 diapers around it to form a circle.

When you have more diapers rolled and ready, keep adding to the foundation. The bottom tier should have 6 in the middle, 12 in the second ring, and 18 on the outside.

You can also start stacking the second tier while building the bottom.

To build the third tier, you will need to stack the baby bottles. In order to hold it together, I used glue spots on the bottom of the bottle. You can also use double sided tape, works just the same!

Now that the bottles are connected, build the third tier.

Move the cake onto the cardboard so you won’t have difficulty in transporting the cake later.

I used 4 rolled up receiving blankets instead of building another tier of diaper rolls.

I also wrapped a fleece blanket around the bottom tier for part of the decoration.

When you’re done building the tiers, wrap a ribbon around to cover the rubber bands. I used a thick baby blue ribbon and added a thin brown ribbon for contrast.

Tuck some baby goodies into the brown ribbon and top your cake with the cake topper.

And there you have it, a unique, one-of-a-kind baby diaper cake for your next baby shower. Enjoy!

My coworkers and I have a wax cow that we dress up for the holidays and one day, someone remarked, “Why don’t you make a calendar out of it of all the outfits?” Genius! So we started putting together themes for every month, pulled together our resources and had little photo sessions for the cow. It’s rather amusing and it totally made work more enjoyable. Most of the props were handmade, with a little help of photoshop for touch ups. Here are some of my favorite shots for our 2011 Cowlendar. They’re all California-based themes, can you guess the cities or locations?

Now, we’re brainstorming for the 2012 Cowlendar with movie themes! We’ll have Driving Miss Dairy, Pirates of the Cowabbean, The Sound of Mooosic, and much much more! Can’t wait to get started!