Paint Chip Calendar

Someone posted this awesome paint chip calendar idea on Pinterest a few weeks ago. I put it on the back burner because, even though it was pretty cool, I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted to do it. But then I was thinking it would look pretty cool in the office. So off to Google I went to look at other ideas. I found this:

This was my favorite, over all. It looks very polished. Unfortunately, I’m not very good with scissors (yes, I know how awful that sounds), but I did the best I could.

ETA: It was just brought to my attention that, for some reason Crane & Canopy linked to my blog for Maple & Magnolia‘s paint chip calendar. Let me stop you here: I will not be showing you how to make the above calendar. I will be making a calendar like it. If you wish to see her specific calendar, please click the picture. Thank you! 🙂

What you will need:

• a frame (mine was 16×21 inches)
• 35 (or more…get more) paint chips
• double-sided tape
• fabric
• scissors (or other cutting tools–preferably, a paper trimmer and a corner rounder)
• a ruler

Step 01: Since my fabric was folded up around a piece of cardboard, my first step was to iron it. If yours is wrinkle-free (lucky…), go ahead and skip this step.

Step 02: Lay your fabric on the cardboard backing from your frame and then secure it around the back. I used mounting tape to hold it down (I didn’t have an double-sided tape at the time). A hot glue gun would have worked better, but something went wrong with mine and I was too lazy to run and get a new one. (You’ll notice that things break a lot around here.)

Step 03: Your background is done! Now cut your paint chips down to the size you want. I believe mine are 1 x 3 inches.

In case you’re curious, this is the basic color-scheme I went with:

Which was inspired by this palette from Lowe’s:

But I took out the brown ( it just seemed to dark) and tossed a gray in there.

Step 04: I wasn’t happy with these, so I went to Wal-Mart and got some Better Homes & Gardens paint chips (which was a bad idea the weekend before Halloween). After a few hours of frustration, I wound up punching out the holes and putting them on the paint chips from Lowe’s. Then I lined them up on my frame.

Like I said, I’m awful at cutting. So keep that in mind when you see my paint chips. Eventually I’m going to get the tools I need to redo this whole project. While I love the rounded edges in Maple & Magnolia’s calendar, I tried that…and it went very, very badly. So I saved myself the trouble for now.

Step 05: Once you have a general idea of where you want your paint chips to sit, put double-sided tape under them to keep them in place. I like using the tape better than glue, because if you hate it or want to change it later, it’ll be easy. (ETA: It is now three months later and my calendar is still going strong, so the tape is fine!) Once that’s finished, get out a paint chip of a color you didn’t use (or a regular sheet of paper…doesn’t really matter) and cut it to the same width as your other chips and just tall enough for you to write the days of the week on. I forgot to take a picture of that process, but here it is completed.

Step 06: Tape the days of the week to the background. Put the frame back together and you’re done!

It’s not perfect, and a lot of it is crooked…but it will work for now.  My astigmatism is pretty bad and often gets in the way of my being able to see if something is straight…particularly if I’m too close. Which is weird, because I’m near-sighted.

Word to the wise, if this projects starts frustrating you as much as it did me, just take a break and start taking pictures of your cat wearing your Halloween costume.

(I’m going to be a bat.)

Anyway, this project cost about $11.00. The frame was $9.99 and the fabric was $0.97.  The paint chips, of course, were free.

I’d love to see what you all come up with!