Cabin Crafting Series #3: DIY wood block calendar (Part 1)

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February 22, 2016: I’ve been wanting to do a DIY wood block calendar project, something similar to the Elephant date blocks that my mom Xenia bought me as a small Christmas gift. I love that wood block set and flip my blocks each day faithfully. It has become a fun and functional way for me to methodically update my personal calendar (and, I discovered with delight, a perfect way to remind me to do daily tasks…like take my vitamins and pills).

So for today’s cabin crafting project, I decided to create my own wood block calendar using wood supplies that I picked up from AC Moore and stickers from Michaels. Each wood piece costing $1 or less, I was able to put together a display/storage box and a set of five blocks for a total of $5.50. Of course it would have been much cheaper to cut the wood myself, but I don’t have a condo wood shop yet with all the saws and sanders in place…yet. (What can I say?)

I had the wood pieces in my craft stash for eons, but I came up with the idea to use stickers to decorate the wood blocks with days of the week on Saturday morning (the day we were leaving to head to the lake).

I took small glitter alphabet stickers from Michaels Recollections line and spelled out the day of the week on each side of one block. Since there are six sides to a cube, I used one side for both Saturday and Sunday.

I loved how my block looked on its own (and in combination with my calendar blocks from Ten Thousand Villages). Instant project. I packed up all the blocks I can find with the two $1 wood boxes I had in my supply so that I can make more of these decorated blocks.

Working in the loft space of the Bella Donna tiny house cabin, I made more days of the week blocks.

Because these stickers are so small (and are on the delicate side), I used a special set of precision art tweezers to position each letter carefully. Wednesday, for obvious reasons, was the trickiest side to make.

I think the lime green glitter against the natural dark color wood makes a very attractive contrast. And the sticker designs adds a subtle hint of 3D texture.

So a mock up of a full date layout using four blocks looks like the above image. The box display can hold up to five blocks, so I’m brainstorming special event and activity reminder labels for a fifth block.

In Part 2, I will show a completed wood block calendar set as I continue working on the project in the Deep Creek Village Drive cabin. dkf