Cartoons

You just read the title of this post and are now thinking, “Kris, it’s already over 2 weeks into 2016. Isn’t it a little late to be making a calendar?”. Perhaps you are right reader… or perhaps it’s never to late to make a fangirl calendar. Perhaps it’s never too late to make anything totally awesome that you’ll get 12 months of enjoyment out of! This afternoon I sat down to make the official 2016 calendar of My Fangirl Life (not actually an “official” thing but KG, Justine, & I all have it hanging on our walls so it kind of is) and I wanted to share the experience with all of you!

This will be the third consecutive year where KG & I hang a homemade fangirl calendar in our home, and I’m not sure we’ll ever look back. I find most store bought calendars contain only 70% quality content… and that’s just the featured images. It’s amazing having each month feature photos you actually want to see. Not only do we get to pick what each month will be themed and the photos we use to represent that theme but we can also throw in extras, like birthdays, premieres, and other dates that are important to us.

Don’t worry that it’s already January! We always make ours this month and it ends up being a February to January calendar… unconventional but I never think of making a new one until the new year has already begun! Are you convinced it’s a good idea? Great! Now that you’re on board, let’s get to work on our fangirl calendars together…

1. Pick a way to make your calendar. 

There are tons of options out there! Sites like Snapfish or Shutterfly are a couple of obvious go-tos. I like to use the built in Project function of iPhoto to make & order my calendars through Apple. I know I’m a slave to my Macintosh masters but I love the crisp look of their finished product… and any limitations in layout options can be easily overcome by inserting ready-made collages from PicMonkey. If you’re digitally challenged or just like the look of real handmade projects better, try grabbing scissors, glue, and some teen magazines to create a fangirl calendar on a budget.

2. Choose your monthly themes.

Here’s where the ‘fangirl’ part of fangirl calendars comes in. You have 12 months of themes to pick! Year 1 of My Fangirl Life’s “official” calendar was dedicated entirely to One Direction. Each of the boys had a month. We had live performance photos and red carpet shots. There was even one month that just had pictures of Liam surfing & Louis playing football. So hot. Year 2 saw us diversify. We still had a month for each of our fav members of 1D, but also added months for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Disney, My Little Pony, and more.

Have fun with the way you assign your months too. Louis Tomlinson is always December, since that is his birth month. This year’s Once Upon a Time month will be the one where we’ll see the show return to our televisions with its midseason premiere. My personal favourite theme is “Hot Guys” Month… purely a collage of all of our favourite hot guys (along the lines of the Hunk Appreciation Day Gallery). For last year’s fangirl calendar is just happened to be January 2016 ?￰ﾟﾘﾍ Hurray for looking at my calendar every day this month!

3. Find the right images for each month.

Oooo this is the fun part. You get to play around with layouts & colours and create beautiful photos or photo collages for each of your desired themes! And before you even do that you can spend hours browsing the internet (or your magazines) for the right images. Is there any better way to spend your day than scrolling through countless photos of Harry Styles?

4. Add your extras!

iPhoto allows you to add images into the days of the calendar as well, which means you can mark all of your special dates. This is probably also the case for many other creation sites. Last year I put in pictures for everyone important’s birthdays (us, our families, our friends, One Direction, etc). This year I’m going to add a few other important dates, like movie release dates, tv premieres, and fangirl holidays such as:

• December 1st – Fandom Day
• March 25th – The Anniversary of the Destruction of the One Ring
• May 2nd – Date of the Battle of Hogwarts

Bonus: When the month is done you have decorative wall art!

You’ve spent hours putting this fangirl calendar together. You painstakingly picked each photo and positioned it perfectly. You’d hate to only get one month of enjoyment out of each page. If you are really proud of how everything turned out, cut the page out of your calendar when the month is done and hang it on your wall as a bit of art. Instant fangirl decor!

Will you be making your own calendar this year? Let us know what your monthly themes would be in the comments… for a real or imaginary calendar!

Love & Luck,
Kris