We made it through Christmas! WOO HOO!

Okay, so maybe we’re not quite on the other side of the holidays just yet. We still have to get through this weird liminal time between now and Jan 1 but thankfully, I have a lot of work to do so I will be avoiding the loose ends feeling that can sometimes happen for me in the last week of the year. It was a quiet one for me. All the kids are far-flung and I don’t drive. so I hunkered down with the furs and watched TikTok to keep my spirits up. I had some moments of perfect contentment. I had some moments of melancholy & nostalgia. I woke up to word of a friend’s passing out of this world on Christmas morning, so that was a big bummer, but I know that what is remembered lives so I touched base with mutual friends, spoke her name, lit a candle, and then put a tourtiere in the oven to graze on throughout the day while I watched yet more TikTok.

Those little hits of dopamine really do save my bacon sometimes.

That’s blooming tea in that massive mug and that’s a black velvet mumu caftan I’m wearing. 

It wasn’t the best Christmas, but it wasn’t the worst either (that was December 2020), and that’s progress so I’ll take it.

My intention for today was to hop on YouTube and do a Boxing Day edition of Prayers To The Moon, but I got a bee in my bonnet, so we need to push our live gathering to tomorrow because it is going to take some preparation. Let me explain:

Every year for a while now I’ve provided my patrons with a printable calendar (landscape or portrait orientation) so they can create their own monthly calendar using art they made in my programs (or any program, for that matter). This morning I woke up ON FIRE to use some of the paintings from PTTM to create my own calendar for 2023, and I thought HOW MUCH FUN WOULD IT BE if we did that together?

SO! SHIFT-O CHANGE-O!!

Here’s How It’ll Work
Grab the calendar PDFs from this folder on dropbox here.

Go through your art for 2022 and choose twelve paintings – 12 landscape (horizontal) orientated or 12 portrait (vertical) orientated. Pick one of the twelve to act as your cover if you like – so make this your very favourite – or pick 13 paintings. It’s up to you.

Print a copy of the calendar of your choice from the link above, and a copy of each painting you want to include in your calendar. You could also use your originals if you prefer, but I have plans for those so I’ll be using copies. I recommend printing on coverstock or cardstock for a nice sturdy calendar. NOTE: Print the calendars double-sided – I know that seems weird given that there are blank pages, but trust me on this.

Gather together scissors, glue (I’ll be using tape runner because I’m lazy like that), washi tape, and whatever else you’d like to embellish your project with.

Meet me here at 1 p.m. EASTERN tomorrow.

I will be using the portrait (vertical) calendar, which I will print at 8.5 x 11. I’ll be printing my paintings at 8 x 10 on 8.5 x 11 paper so there’s room for washi tape and whatever else I want to put on there. I’m going to disc-bind mine with some dotted paper between months for notes and whatnot, (you can find a free printable here) but you can do a wall calendar with this if you prefer – I’ll show you a couple of different binding methods for that.

If you don’t have what you need to do this project with me tomorrow, no worries! Come anyway! Bring a notebook to take notes so you can get what you need and complete the project later.

If you did A Year Of Mary with me in 2021 or Book Of Mirrors with me in 2022 (these happened over on Patreon), this is a great way to use those monthly paintings as well. If you did Moonshine 2022 with me (or any year!) you could use the monthly paintings from that instead!

What do you say? Are you in?

See you tomorrow.
xo
Effy