When one year wraps up, it’s always good to go into the next year immediately thinking about your calendar artwork. A smart artist would do this and, in fact, there was a year I had my calendar completed by Summer. 2024 was not that year. When October rolled around, I knew I needed to prioritize and focus on my 2025 calendar. I’m going to take you through my process of creating this 12-month wall calendar featuring florals, fruits, and vintage tins.
Initial Inspiration and Theme
Consulting My Audience
Instagram is such a powerful tool and much of the target audience for my calendar resides there. I decided instead of assuming what people love to adorn their walls with, I’d ask them. I took to instagram stories and asked a series of questions including:
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What kind of wall calendar artwork do you love best?
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Floral (winner)
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Pattern
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Travel
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Mini-scenes
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When it comes to wall calendars do you prefer:
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Floral Illustrations (winner)
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Floral Patterns
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When it comes to wall calendars do you prefer:
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Motivational
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Fun/Funny (winner)
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When it comes to wall calendars do you prefer:
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Large artwork
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Space to Write (winner)
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When it comes other wall calendars do you prefer:
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Forest scenes
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Floral bouquets
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Seasonal scenes (winner)
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Travel scenes
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When it comes to wall calendars, is it important to be able to keep the artwork?
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Yes I like to frame it
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No, I don’t usually keep it (winner)
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Refine
These answers gave me so much insight and honestly a lot of freedom to create something I enjoy. Not needing to format the artwork to be 8x10 or any other frame-able size was huge. Seasonal florals are right up my alley and something I enjoy drawing so I immediately started thinking of other products I may be able to use the finished pieces on.
Thinking Full Picture
I can’t emphasize this point enough. Creating 12 new pieces of artwork is no small feat and to think these may only be used on a product for about 3-4 months (if you’re lucky to keep the calendar sales coming for that long). That’s a little depressing considering how much time you’re going to invest in those new drawings. Aha! There’s a solution and it’s to think about what other product you could pitch this artwork on. For me, it was puzzles. I’ve always wanted to get into the puzzle world and I think the artwork I create could be perfect for that.
Theme
At this point I knew it would be floral and I began looking at trending floral illustrations on Pinterest. I noticed I was consistently intrigued by florals that flowed to fill the space, perhaps a little less realistic and more focused on shapes and colors. After refining the type of florals I wanted to draw, I started to think about how my audience wanted something fun/funny. I started brainstorming some unusual items that flowers could be coming out from (like a vase) which proved harder than I thought. Knowing I was on a time crunch, I didn’t have the time to explore this like I would have usually. Instead it lead me to thinking about all of the amazing vintage tins I used to collect when my parents had an antique shop. Flowing florals + vintage tins + the addition of fruits = yes please!
Sketching and Planning the Layout
Sketching
I knew each month would be similar in that there’d be a unique tin and unique flowers coming out from it. So I began by drawing the shape of the tins on each month, along with the stems of the floral and greenery elements. This provided me with a very good skeleton of how to place my elements.
Meaning
Instead of it just being random flowers and fruits, I decided to use seasonal fruits and birth month flowers.
Choosing the Color Palette
For the color palette, I started with my Molly Marie Pea color palette but made a lot of adjustments and additions to make each month’s artwork work for that season. I knew my audience liked seasonal illustrations so I wanted to honor that both with the flowers chosen but also the colors.
Preparing for Print
Always Proofread
This can be hard to do yourself, so sometimes it’s nice to have someone else look at it as well. Let me tell you about my flub this year: I spelled January “Janauary” on the FRONT of my calendar. Luckily I had only sold it to one person at the time of noticing it so I was able to fix it and resend a correct version.
Print Yourself vs Print on Demand
I’ve always had my calendars printed by someone else as I do not have the tools or the time to do this myself. Letting go of control is always hard, but sometimes it is necessary. The first year I sold calendars I went through SmartPress and I loved the quality and packaging they provided. The con was they don’t dropship which means you have to guess how many you’ll sell and outright purchase them and you’re also responsible for sourcing shipping materials and shipping each one. When I decided to start dropshipping, I chose Gooten and wow was this easy. Connecting it to my Etsy shop was easy and the quality of their calendars is beautiful. The con was there wasn’t a whole lot of room to make a profit. Now I’m using Gelato and this was the easiest to set up and also has the most wiggle room to make a profit with every sale. The con is the quality is good, but nothing amazing. They also print front and back.
Final Thoughts
I learned a lot this year even though it’s the 4th year of offering a calendar. Never rush yourself, this means you won’t be as excited about your artwork and you’re more likely to make mistakes. Proofreading and double checking all of the holidays are labelled correctly is key to a quality product. And of course, take time to source your printer so you are fully happy with the finished product.
These florals, the colors, the tins, the fact that you can see some of the brush strokes - these are all of the things I love about this calendar. Not to mention the writing space feels so nice on this soft paper.
If you’re interested in checking it out - you can find my 2025 wall calendar for sale in my shop.
