DIY Dry Erase Calendar

Two things about me: I love arts and crafts and I love organization. While browsing Pinterest, I came across an outstanding project that I wanted to recreate. 

Never mind the fact that the months will be the same, that is strictly coincidence. However, when I saw this I was like score, this brings two of my characteristics into one place. *does the happy dance*  So, I searched for products to recreate this piece, which will lead to more posts, because it didn't work out as well as I had hoped and I have made other projects with the products from those failed attempts. Keep reading to see my take on the DIY Dry Erase Paint Chip Calendar. 

Unfortunately, this project may change as the fabric I chose may not have been the best idea for writing purposes, but it goes well with my desk color scheme.

Materials used:

• Fabric
• Michaels frame (18x24)
• Glue Gun
• Paint Chips (got them from Lowe's, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot) 
• Hot Glue Gun (this optional adhesive, your preference of adhesive would more than likely work out fine)
• Scissors
• Ruler
• To create the paint chips I used a Recollections 5/8 hole puncher (Michaels) and Fiskars corner punch (there are a lot to choose from so that will be a preference item)

My paint chips all ready to go. I cut out thirty-six just in case, and I stacked them in five rows of seven. 

While this picture doesn't do this fabric any justice; I chose a fabric that has stripes of purple, gray, black and taupe. I just knew this would work well with my DIY IKEA hack desk; however, this poses a problem further down the list.

Next, I got to work with placing the chips on the board, and because I don't do things straight easily (as you can tell from the above picture's lines), I created a line across the top with some pretty silver duct tape that I found at the Dollar Tree in order to try and keep things straight. 

After trying to keep a straight line and an ALMOST relative spacing for the paint chips, I finally had a finished product. (Really, it got outrageous with the spacing and I stop kidding myself and started to glue the paint chips down.)


The finished product below...

But as you probably have said looking at the top of the frame, how was I supposed to see the month regardless of what color I wrote it in, and therefore, I made an addendum to the calendar.

Viola!

The issue with this picture is that it caught all of the reflections, including my lights in the ceiling, making it look like something is on the paint chips. 

To remedy the situation, I tried to take a picture with the lights off...

But the flash didn't do me any justice either!

I hope that the just of the project is able to be seen, but you can also see where my dilemma lies, with writing the dates inside of the punched holes. I can see when I write information on the paint chips, but some of the number of the days are hard to read even with using a light colored dry erase marker. I love the look of the colors, but I am not sure yet if I will just let it be, or recreate the project on a different fabric.

Update: 09/30/2016
For the function of the calendar, I had to change the background to a lighter background. Please see below pictures

So my desk set up area has changed, but this was the set up once I completed the updated version of the DIY Dry Erase Calendar