The best thing about a holiday in the middle of the week (4th of July) is that I get an extra craft day!!! I thought I’d put it to good use and go ahead and design my July 2019 desktop calendar early in the month.
If you’re new to my blog, my goal is to design one of these calendar pages each month for the following year. That way, by the end of this year, I have several sets to give away as Christmas gifts. The calendars measure 6″ x 4″ and fit in a standard frame.
For the July 2019 calendar page, I tried to do something different. I mixed up a few stamp sets to create a mystical underwater scene.
Most of the products on this calendar page are from the Sea of Textures stamp set and coordinating Under the Sea Framelits Dies. (You can purchase these two products in a bundle for 10% off!) But I also added the mermaid silhouette from the Magical Mermaid stamp set. It’s like she’s in the distance and you can barely see her.
Before I started stamping, I was playing around on a scrap piece of Shimmery White Cardstock. I wanted to practice in order to get a good idea of placement before stamping on the actual calendars. I was just fooling around, and ended up doing things a little out of order. I stamped several images first and then painted a watercolor wash over them. I ended up really liking the results, because the watercoloring blurred the images and it looked like the items were under water, which is exactly what I wanted.
So, I ended up stamping the mermaid with Balmy Blue ink, and the sand and net with Sahara Sand ink. Afterwards, I painted a wash over the water area with an Aqua Painter using Balmy Blue and Blueberry Bushel ink. Then, I painted a wash over the sand area with Petal Pink ink. I tried to keep the wash fairly light so the images didn’t blur too much.
After the watercolor wash dried, I stamped the seaweed with Balmy Blue and Blueberry Bushel ink and the smaller coral with Calypso Coral ink.
For the larger coral die cut, I inked up the stamp with Petal Pink ink, then used a Sponge Dauber to add Calypso Coral ink directly to the stamp on the bottom section before stamping on Shimmery White Cardstock. For the smaller coral die, I cut it out first from Shimmery White Cardstock, and then watercolored it with the same two colors. My sand dollar also has a very light watercolor wash of Balmy Blue.
To create the month, I stamped the letters with the Make A Difference stamp set. I was actually able to place all the stamps on one block and stamp them all together with Blueberry Bushel ink on Sahara Sand Cardstock. Afterwards, I punched the month out with the Classic Label punch, and then fed the ends back through the same punch to shorten and label and create the “V”s on the ends.
Everything is mounted on a sheet of Tranquil Textures Designer Series Paper trimmed down to 4″ x 6”. (Don’t miss the current sale on Designer Series Papers — Buy 3 Get 1 Free all during the month of July!)
I created a printable calendar page on My Memories Suite. To download the calendar page JPEG, click HERE. Print the JPEG on 8-1/2″ x 11″ on Shimmery White Cardstock with the smallest margins possible for your printer. The days and numbers are colored Blueberry Bushel. (I used Stampin’ Up!’s Hex Codes to enter the RGB value. You can download that color sheet HERE.) Each sheet will make 4 calendar layers. Trim each one down to 3″ x 5″ as follows:
Supplies used on my calendar page:
Current Promotions:
Contact me for more details or refer to the July Newsletter.
Tami’s July Special:
Make a purchase of $75 or more from July 1 to 16 and earn a free Textured Impression Embossing Folder of your choice! To qualify, use hostess code XX4R3SGU when you check out. Also, please do not select No Contact. I will need to contact you to determine which Textured Impression Embossing Folder you choose. For orders over $150, you qualify to be your own hostess, so don’t use this hostess code. It is more advantageous to use the hostess benefits for yourself and select your own free items.
In addition, see my earlier post for information on the Buy 3, Get 1 Free designer series paper sale and how you can earn a free set of ink pads valued at $75!
Have an amazing weekend!
