Make Your Own Calendar — Christmas Gift Ideas

With Christmas just around the corner, I wanted to share a really nice idea with you.  A really special and unique gift for a family member, friend or even a colleague would be to put together your own personal calendar for 2013.

You can click on the picture to get started now!  They are quick and easy to make and Zazzle ships worldwide:

custom calendars picture

Free ecards from my Calendars

If you don’t have the time or inclination, I have put together 2 unique calendars of my art — one focusing primarily on landscape art and the other on poppy art.

You will also find, below the calendars, your 2 free ecards for this week (click on the picture, then right-click and ‘save as’, then upload to your e-mail anytime you want to use them), inspired from the art I chose for the calendars…

          

           

Happy Friday!

Other blogs you may enjoy:

The End of the Mayan Calendar but a New Beginning for Us!

Never-Before-Seen Photographs of How I Paint my Patterned Poppies

The Best Christmas Present Ever!

Incredible Inspiring Art by Stephen Wiltshire

An Artful Splash of Colour For Your Facebook Timeline

How to Get Your Creative Space Working For You

 

How to Gift Yourself with Gratitude

The Attitude for Gratitude

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I was thinking about how all global citizens can catch a ride on this American holiday wave.

Gratitude is something we should express every day, not just on one particular day — obviously.  However, having one ‘big’ day to truly express your thanks is not a bad thing.

Taking Leaves Out of American Books

So, why not mark off Thanksgiving Day as a special day for you too — no matter where you are in the world — to give thanks for all that you have.  If you already make this part of your daily routine, my hat is lifted to you.

If it is something you just haven’t got around to thinking about yet, or, you have given it some thought but somehow that chemical reaction in your brain runs out of electricity as it is passed out through your ear.

In other words, you know you have mounds of things to be grateful for but you haven’t the staying power to run through the list every morning.

Making Your Own Gratitude Board in Seconds!

I have the solution!  It’s called a gratitude board and it goes straight onto your fridge — the one place you are guaranteed to look at least once day!

You can make it out of cardboard, you can print it from your computer, you can make your own at Zazzle or you can buy it ready-made HERE.

However you decide to go about making this board, I suggest you set a goal to have it up and running by a certain date and hold yourself accountable.  Better yet, pair up with a friend and do it together — that way you can hold each other accountable to get it done!

Suggestions and Tips to Get the Ball Rolling 

These boards make great gifts too, especially if you are looking for a meaningful token for that certain someone who needs a little nudge in the right direction.

“When children are immersed in a creative task, the underlying lesson sticks like glue.”

You  can also present them to your guests as a parting novelty at Thanksgiving dinner — a heart-felt gesture like that is sure to go down a treat!  Or, if you are not hosting this special occasions yourself, why not give one to your whomever happens to be your gracious host at Thanksgiving lunch/dinner.  Heck, they even make the perfect birthday or Christmas gift!

If you don’t feel like getting the magazines, photo’s, glue and cardboard out to make your own board from scratch, you can make a gratitude dry-erase board on Zazzle and customize it to your heart’s content — CLICK HERE (they start at $16.95).  You can dress them up with your own pictures or photo’s of loved ones that you are grateful for — go mad!

Get the Kids On-Board the Gratitude Express!

You can even get your children or grandchildren involved with this project — it will be a valuable lesson for them to see just how much they also have in their lives to be thankful for.  When children are immersed in a creative task, the underlying lesson sticks like glue.

Just remember to leave some room on the board for expansion.  This is something that you are going to have to get used to along your path of gratitude because the more you give thanks for what you have, the more you will have to be thankful for.

You don’t feel like making your own or you just don’t have the time?  Click on the picture below, I have already made up one for you.

Other articles you may enjoy:

Why is Gratitude so Important when Creating Abundance?

7 Helpful Pointer to Activate the Flow of Abundance

Christmas Gift Ideas…Part 3

A Recap

In the past 2 weeks I have discussed great sites such as RedBubble and Zazzle for creating your own gift designs, whether it is from photographs or your own personal artwork.  See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

Need inspiration?

Today we are going to go behind the scenes and discuss getting inspired.  It’s not an easy thing to obtain if you are stuck for motivation or ideas.  This is where perusing other artist, designers and photographers websites or works on sites such as RedBubble is such a great way of seeing what other creative beings are up to.  Not that you want to copy their ideas but it does, more often than not, lead you to do something that is triggered by someones idea but made completely different by your creative style.

A lot of these gift ideas use captions along with images that can really have that added ‘wow’ factor touch.  So, to get you going on some inspirational visuals, I have been introduced to a site called Pinterest and I want to share this wonderful site with you.

Pinteresting…

For those of you who are not acquainted with the site, it is a really great visual social network.  Displaying not only art, design and photography but also captions, short quotations, illustration, fashion, home decor designs, food and a whole lot of other fantastic things to stir up your creative juices.

“Set aside some good quality time for this as I guarantee the candy feast your eyes will be lapping up is going to make time fly…”

It is a fairly easy site to navigate and it allows you to ‘pin’ any image you like, adding it to your pin board on the site where others can have a look too and repin if they desire.  You also get to check out what other people have pinned on their boards, whether it be their personal creations or other images they have nabbed off the web.

Again, these pictures do fall under copyright laws — so obey!  But have fun getting inspired and motivated to start your own creations.

Set aside some good quality time for this as I guarantee the candy feast your eyes will be lapping up is going to make time fly out the window…next thing you look at the clock and hours have passed as you have perused the many visual delights!  Enjoy and, most of all, have fun.

Future projecting

Can you imagine how impressed your family and friends will be when you present them with a gift of your very own design?!

It is a great way to express yourself, feel a sense of achievement and to get that Christmas list looking good.

If you still feel like making your own gifts is just not for you, here are some more gift ideas from my store: