2015 April Desktop Calendar

April 2015 Desktop calendar

April 2015 desktop calendar - watercolour tulips, scanned into iPad to add calendar. To use as desktop, right click and save as desktop. 

2014 December Desktop calendars

2014 December Snowman desktop calendar

2014 December Blue Bird desktop calendar

I know I'm a bit early for December...I'm rushing the holiday season.  :)

I got in the Christmas mood early and started making calendars.  Right now, I have the snowman one on my desktop.  I wasn't happy with the November one...it seems that Sketchclub had a bit of an issue with things saving as a low res JPEG instead of PNG so the quality was not there. Sketchclub is fixed now but I didn't want to re-do it so I went straight to December. 

Snowman desktop - done in Procreate.  Blue Bird desktop - done in Sketchclub. 

September 2014

2014 September desktop calendar

September is one on those in-between months where it's not quite summer anymore and not quite Fall yet. It's time to start looking at cozy sweaters without worrying about heat exhaustion. It was a really warm summer. The plus side is that our garden loved the heat...especially the tomatoes.

Tomatoes are at the end now, time to harvest what's left in the garden.

Painted in Sketchclub, Procreate, & Glaze on the iPad.

August 2014

August 2014 desktop calendar 

It's August and the year is more than halfway over. Hubby has another two months to his retirement and I have another two years to go.

As a kid, August was a time of laziness for me. It was ok to lie on the cool grass for hours at a time and do nothing but watch the clouds go by. August was endless.

As an adult, August goes by way too fast. August is the other side of the year. The days feel shorter now.  There always seems to be so much to do and so very little time to do everything. A two week vacation is gone in a blink of an eye. I feel like I'm running out of time.

August 2014 was done in Procreate, filters created in Glaze, with everything imported to Sketchclub to combine and final editing. Calendar insert is from here.

July 2014 desktop calendar

July 2014 

I skipped June. No real reason other than I was busy and didn't make a calendar. So much was happening in June. Work was insane with our annual recruitment, new members coming into our team, and old members leaving. I've been doing more knitting and spinning lately. Less computer stuff and more real life stuff.

May 2014 Calendar

2014 May calendar

April showers brought May flowers. Lots of May flowers. We had a few days of sunshine and was able to enjoy the full magnificence of the magnolia blooms before they fell and rotted.

Photo taken on the Nokia Lumia 1020 and edited on the iPad.

May is also EDiM (Every Day in May) where you challenge yourself to do a quick sketch a day. I've decided this year to actually draw something in a real sketchbook. So far so good.

I'm also going to keep going with the photo a day as well. I'm pretty impressed with myself that this will be the third month. Commit one month at a time.

April 2014 desktop calendar

April 2014

To me, April is Spring. April is the month everything wakes up again. Flowers and buds are showing up on all my garden plants. The magnolia tree is covered with fuzzy green and pink buds and you know that in a few weeks, the tree will be covered with soft pink blossoms. Tiny green buds are appearing on the apple tree in the back yard.

The snowdrops photo was taken in my backyard, using the Nokia Lumia 1020. Calendar bit was done in Sketchclub app on the iPad.

The last week of February and the beginning of March was a couple of rough weeks. I just did not feel up to making a desktop calendar. I think this is probably my favourite picture taken so far on the 1020.  I love snowdrops. 

Happy New Year - January 2014

January 2014

It really felt like 2013 just whooshed by so fast. I'm really looking forward to 2014. I have a good feeling about this upcoming year. I'm optimistic that it's going to be a good year.

Things haven't changed much at work but I've changed. I think it's really finally sunk into my brain that it is what it is and I have a life to live. I think 2013 was my wake-up call.

I'm not calling these my New Year's resolutions but more like a To-Do list for 2014.

1. Creative everyday - it doesn't have to be a finished piece of work, just anything - a couple rows of knitting, bake some cookies, doodle during a meeting.

2. Make sourdough - make a sourdough starter and keep it going for at least a few months.

3. Bake more - hmm...that means I have to eat more baked goods.

4.  Go out for a walk at lunch everyday for at least 10 minutes - rain or shine.

5. Focus more on the good than the bad.

6. Knit at least two projects using Continental knitting.

I'll probably add to this list as I think of more things.

Pithy details on the calendar - original photo was taken one very foggy morning. Apps used - Glaze, Sketchclub, Snapseed, Artrage.

December 2013 Desktop Calendar

December 2013

I really thought I might not have a calendar to post for December.  It was not easy coming up with one image that sums up December for me. Then I read Tammy's post at My Flower Journal  with a tutorial on how to paint watercolour lights. It reminded me  that as much as I love everything about December and Christmas, it's the lights that I love best.

When I was a child, I used to love sitting in the dark with just the glow of the lights on the Christmas tree. It was magical.

Lights were sketched and painted in Sketchclub on my iPad, transferred to Artrage for the watercolour paper texture.

To use, double click on image and save.

Linked to Art Every Day Month, Day 29.

2013 November Calendar

2013 November calendar 

November was a tough month to do. To me, it's always been the in-between month. The month between Halloween and Christmas.  It's neither here nor there. Weather-wise, some days are gorgeous and sunny and other days it could be cold and dreary - typical Westcoast weather. We don't get the drastic changes in our foliage like back East. The landscape is still green, soggy but green.

The photo was taken with my cellphone on one of our walks along the Deboville Slough in Port Coquitlam. It wasn't raining but it was a very foggy day. The mist clung onto the spider web and the droplets looked like little pearls. Other than the calendar overlay, I felt it didn't need any tweaking.

October 2013 Desktop calendar

October 2013 - corner calendar

October 2013 - full size

I had a tough time deciding which one I liked better - smaller calendar on the corner or the full size one.  I might try one for a couple of weeks and switch it around to see which one I prefer.  To use, just open it and save to your desktop. Or print it out to use as a monthly journal page.

October is always a darker month than September. There's no more Mr Nice Guy with October. You know you're in full-on wet weather. Skies are dark and grey but still not as bad as November and December. I love October - it has Halloween! I love the spooky scariness of Halloween.

This picture was taken along the trail by the river where we walk the dog. The sun had just came out from behind clouds and from the angle where I was standing, the tree limbs looked so much like giant spider legs crawling out of the ground.

Picture was put through the various iPad apps so much that I've lost track of which app did what. Calendar was created in Procreate, frame was created in Snapseed, and everything was put together in Sketchclub.

September 2013 monthly calendar

September 2013 monthly calendar 

I made this to be used on a desktop or printed out as a monthly calendar page for a journal. Feel free to use as you wish.