For those of you wondering how to make your own 2011 tea towel calendars to print on Spoonflower, below is a calendar template to get you started.
We're a bit late posting this, given that our 2-for-1 tea towel sale ends tomorrow (Friday, Dec. 3), but better late than never. There's still almost a month to go before the New Year starts.
Download 2011 Tea-Towel Calendar Template In MS Word Format
Download 2011 Tea-Towel Calendar Template as a PDF
If you download the Word version, you can edit the fonts and colors as you wish, then save the file as a PDF that can be imported into a graphics program like Photoshop, or the much cheaper Pixelmator (for Macs only).
If you're in a hurry, just download and import the PDF we've set up. Please note that, while I dearly love Google docs, importing the .doc file into Google docs will mangle the formatting. I haven't tried it, but it might survive the transition to OpenOffice, however.
For our tea-towel calendar, Stephanie and I scanned some fall leaves on our office scanner, then I outlined them in Pixelmator and pasted the leaves around the edges of the PDF calendar layer I had imported.
I also photographed, on a white paper background, a few pine cones, nuts and leaves. By playing with the brightness and contrast in the finished photo, I managed to get rid of any shadows in the background of the images. Then — just as with the leaves — I pasted the individual elements (as transparent PNGs) into new layers in the calendar file in Pixelmator. 
The resulting calendar is set up to fit on a fat-quarter of quilting weight cotton (21" x 18"), but I'm printing it on linen-cotton canvas, which will make a sturdier tea towel.
<— Here it is coming off one of our printers!
Leave a Reply