Calender Artwork

Last week, I made this and took pictures all the way through and was so excited to show you all. And then, to my great disappointment, I accidentally deleted all the pictures...So now I'll just have to give you the details instead of show them.

I wanted to do something with the months of the year and not just the seasons. I knew I had a lot of popsicle sticks so why not use them! I taped 12 (one for each month) popsicle sticks together with masking tape.Then I glued a popsicle stick at the top and one at the bottom with a hot glue gun and removed the masking tape. On the other side, I sketched a tree lightly with a pencil making sure the tree extended to all 12 sticks. The first coat of paint I did was the sky. Then I painted on the tree using a narrow brush for the skinny branches. Next I did the green leaves and grass by tapping the paint on. Then I layered on some "flowers" with different colored dots on the grass and tree. I used the end of a small brush handle to make the dots. I used the same technique of dots for the fall leaves. Then I added some snow on to the branches and ground again with a narrow brush. To make it look like it was snowing, I got a cheap brush, dabbed it in white, and on a scratch piece of paper I hit the brush a couple of times until the bristles fanned out. Usually, cheap paint brushes end up looking like that already from being smashed by little kids so I didn't feel bad doing that to this paint brush. Fan brushes are great for doing snow but since this was so small, I didn't use one. After it all dried, I painted the first initial of each of the months on the sticks. And just like that, you have a cute and easy picture of the months of the year!
*You can also use tongue depressors or paint mixing sticks if you wanted to do it on a bigger scale.