DIY Dry Erase Paint Chip Calendar

Being a teacher, through and through, I am pretty much in love with planning, organizing, and scheduling. For example, every Thursday night I stay up a little bit later than usual to write out my weekend to-do lists (yes, that’s plural... one list for Saturday, one list for Sunday).

Today’s post caters to the scheduling side of my neuroticism. Inspired by Pinterest, I made a paint chip dry-erase calendar.

(Imagine my delight when I learned that you can use dry-erase markers on any glass surface!)

Again, this is a project I did before I decided to start a blog, so I have no pictures of the process, but close your eyes and imagine it... Only, don’t close your eyes, because you need to keep reading.

I went to my local Home Hardware on a quest for paint chips, and found that they have lovely single-coloured cards, rather than the strips with multiple shades on one card. That cut down on the project time significantly because I didn’t have to cut anything.

The frame was a garage sale find for a whopping $1. It was a very dated gold brush tone with a kind of hideous picture of a boat or something framed inside. That boat picture got flipped over to the blank side of the page, and the frame got three healthy coats of white acrylic paint.

I began arranging my paint chips from the outside corners, working my way towards the center (using a little measuring and math skills, arranging them was quite easy).

Here are some things I wish I did differently.

1) Attaching the chips to the paper. I decided to use the first thing I happened to think of, which was scotch tape, rolled and stuck to the middle of the back of each chip. The problem with that is you can ever so slightly see that the paint chips are not fully attached to the backing because the corners of each chip lift away from the paper. Looking back, I should have used a spray adhesive on the paper, and placed the chips on top.

2) Placement of the paint chips. I really should have left a larger space at the top of the frame. I centered the chips in the frame, not thinking of writing the month and the days of the week at the top, so the month is always a little squishy. Hind sight is always 20-20.

Anyways, I think it looks pretty darned good!

It lives in my kitchen, where I pass by it countless times a day. The frame is just deep enough to house both the dry-erase marker, and the three birds one of my awesome kids gave me last year as a teacher appreciation gift at the end of the school year.

 *cute*

Have you crafted your own calendar, or have you made other things out of (wonderful) paint chips? Tell me about it in the comments below!