Pinsperation: Paint Swatch Calendars

I know I've said this a time or two before, but I am SO grateful for my two sisters-in-law who have become such good friends to me, and who make it so much easier to be so far away from home. We missed Whitney this time, but Nicole and I took a night to do a super fun Pinterest project. I am way excited about how it turned out. We had so much fun doing this together, and it was VERY simple to make (although a bit time consuming - if you want to do this project, I would plan about 3 or 4 hours total). Materials you will need: a poster frame (ours were 22 3/8" x 34"), paint swatches, rubber cement, and a corner rounding tool.

We used this tutorial. I even used similar colors she did, because I loved the color scheme and it added some really nice colors to our apartment. Nicole did a super cute rainbow ombre design. For more ideas, just go to Pinterest and search "paint swatch calendar" and tons of options will pop up.

The first step was choosing colors. Honestly, I think this was the hardest part. Whenever I start projects like this, I want it to turn out EXACTLY how I'm picturing it, so I was nervous choosing colors because I wanted it all to come together how I saw it in my head. I got my paint swatches at Walmart (I felt like a thief for taking so many, haha). I chose swatches that had the punch out circle at the top, because I thought they made a great place for the date. Anyway, here are the colors I chose:

Sorry for the shadow. Also, these are already trimmed and the corners rounded, I will explain how I did that next.

After I chose my colors, I trimmed each swatch down, so that there was just a little space above the punched out circle. Since the swatches were different brands, this made some of them different heights than others, but I wanted a more uniform look in the space between the circle and the top of the swatch, rather than a uniform overall height of the paint swatches. I am happy with how it turned out, but Nicole did hers the other way (so that all the paint swatches are the same height, but they are differing in space between the top of the circle and the top of the swatch) and hers looks very nice as well. I think it just comes down to personal preference. I used a ruler and scissors and cut each swatch myself, which worked fine, but if you have a paper cutter or some other tool that will do the job for you, it will save a LOT of time.Then I punched out the circles and used a corner rounder to (obviously) round each of the corners. 

This isn't absolutely necessary, I just felt like it gave it a more finished look. Again, personal preference.

In the tutorial we used, she glued fabric to the cardboard square that comes with the poster frame. However, to save a little time, money, and effort, we just flipped over the paper that comes in the frame and used the white side. The next thing I did was lay out all of the colors to try and find the pattern I liked best. After that, I measured everything off and glued them down. Nicole eye-balled hers and it turned out great. If I could do it again, I think that would be the way I would do it - you can't tell a difference between the two (hers look every bit as straight and even as mine), and she saved a lot of time. The spacing at the top and bottom of the paper, as well as between the paint swatches, is completely up to you. 

Remember the circles I punched out of each swatch? Here is where I put them to use. I glued three circles down above each column, so that they were overlapping with the middle one on top. Then I just took a pen, and wrote a lowercase, cursive letter for each day of the week. I thought this added a cute personal touch, and I love it! It might be my favorite part of the whole calendar. There are several different ways to write the day though, it's up to you! I didn't take a close up picture of my days of the week, but you can kind of see how I did it in my "finished product" picture. Anyway, after that I just flipped the paper over, clipped the cardboard back in, and wrote everything on it with a dry erase marker - voila! 

I realize there are 31 days in May! Don't worry, I fixed it :)

My finished product is on the left, Nicole's is on the right. Her's is in Polish in case you can't read it :)

Like I've stressed through this whole post, my favorite thing about this project is that it is totally "customizable!" Nicole served her mission in Poland, so she chose to write everything in Polish, and I left extra space at the bottom to write quotes or notes. The best part is, if you don't like something, erase it and start over! This is a fun and easy project to add a little organization to your life. Thanks for doing it with me Nicole!