2024 - A Year in Calendar Pages

Actually, I had intended to post this at the beginning of 2025, but well, life happened and I didn't get around to it until today - January 2nd, 2026.

In December 2023 I had the idea to create a calendar for 2024 myself instead of buying one.

To get started I bought a blank calendar for 2024 and a 15 x 15 cm watercolour pad in a local art supply store. However, I couldn’t come up with 12 ideas all at once. So, I decided to challenge myself to paint a new calendar page at the end of each month for the following. But even that proved to be difficult sometimes. And yet, I didn’t give up. On the 1^st of each month, I had a new calendar page ready that I also used as my WhatsApp profile picture of the month.

And here thy are, my calendar pages for 2024 with some details about them:

January 2024

Here I was just playing with a new set of watercolours, namely Paul Rubens MeiLiang and black and white ink.

February 2024

Some mixed media with structure paste, acrylic paint, acrylic ink, black pen, white gesso and a self-made stencil for the leaves.

March 2024

By accident – if there’s such a thing – I learned about the existence of Derwent Graphitint Watercolours in a YouTube video that had been suggested to me, which is why I believe I was meant to see this. It’s just how the Universe works 😊 Anyway, I love them.

Another thing I had discovered was slow stitching. So, for this calendar page I combined the two.

April 2024

Collage is something I love doing a lot. Plus, in March I bought my first gelli plate which is why it’s only logical that my calendar page for April is made of my first attempts at gelli printing. Since the spilled thought had also come up in March I put it on there as well.

May 2024

In April I discovered acrylic inks. Trying them out and playing around with them is what this calendar page is all about.

June 2024

For this calendar page I challenged myself to only use colours I normally don’t use. The result looked…um…I don’t even know how to describe it, but not something I really liked. So, I added a touch of colours I love and some black doodles. After that I was okay with it.

July 2024

Here I tried out my latest acquisition – the Kuretake Gansai Tambi Art Nouveau – watercolours for the background. Then I added some marks with acrylic inks by just moving the dripper around and letting things unfold… in other words: just being myself.

Btw: The font you see, I created myself.

August 2024

I was born in August which is why I wanted that month’s calendar page to be more personal to me.

Well, I grew up with a plush elephant instead of a teddy bear. Said elephant became my trusted friend and until a few years ago – at some point during my healing journey I had to let go of him – he slept in my bed and I took him with me whenever I travelled. I still have him neatly stowed away in my closet, never to be thrown away.

So, an elephant it had to be and collage with some vintage papers that I had come to like a lot over that summer.

September 2024

“Believe you can and do it” has been one of my mantras ever since these words had popped into my mind in July. Back then, I was breaking in a new sketchbook using watercolours in a way I had never used them before but having no doubt whatsoever that it would work. Since then, I’ve felt compelled to integrate it into my pictures from time to time; like a reminder of sorts.

So, in August the thing was altering playing cards and looking into junk

journalling. I just love the vintage look even though junk journalling as such is not really my thing. Long story short: creating a calendar page in vintage look was my general idea and I wanted to combine it with “Believe you can and do it”.

Suddenly I knew exactly what to do: use a that specific photo of me trying to row a boat at the age of almost six years and create a nice frame for it. I didn’t use the original photo though, but a printout I “vintaged” myself.

October 2024

By the end of September, I had no clue what I wanted for October’s calendar page. Since I had just made a birthday card for my dad’s 96^th birthday, I chose to make the same background. This was done rather quickly, but then what?

Luckily, I found a white ink pad at an art supply store and suddenly I had the idea to use the stamps I already owned on the black paper in my stash… et voilà…

November 2024

“Don’t wait! Live now! For shadows are all that remains of us…” had already popped into my head in August, but it wasn’t until the end of October that I felt the need to use those words on this calendar page. Being drawn to muted rose tones as well as experimenting with watercolour and stamps led to this calendar page.

December 2024

“Now is the only moment.”

To those of you who like Star Trek and know Star Trek Picard season two, will probably recognize these words. They are, however, just a shorter version of “The present moment is the only moment we ever have to be alive” by Jon Kabat-Zinn whose teachings about mindfulness were and still are very important to me. So, it’s only fitting to raise awareness for mindfulness on the last calendar page of 2024.

Quite frankly, I’m glad I’m done with the challenge. I had many moments when I had wanted to quit, but somehow I pulled it through. Will I do it again? Definitely not. Having to create something for a specific date in a specific format on a specific substrate is not my thing at all.