Behind the Scenes

Story Behind Making the Words Worth Remembering 2022 Calendar

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I will be very transparent, I entered into making a 2022 Calendar very cautiously!

If you’ve been around very long you know that the 2021 Calendar was quite an adventure. While creating the calendar in the Fall of 2020, I had made an error on the calendar, but it was not discovered until after about 100 of the printed calendars had been shipped out. There were about that many more in the process of being packaged to send out. 

How We Made "Lemonade" Out of Lemons with the 2021 Calendar

When creating the 2021 calendar I unknowingly used 2020 dates instead of 2021 dates! It was very stressful to sort out but we received an outpouring of grace, love and support from our faithful customers! The Printing company reprinted them for me at a discounted rate and we were able to send out corrected versions! 

The unused “mistake” 2021 calendars were actually the hidden prize. So much good came from those stacks of calendar art pages, including Lemonade Reminders Encouragement Kits! 

So in spite of all the good that came from that mistake, I still found myself treading cautiously into creating another calendar for 2022. I don’t know about you, but when I find myself in this place it really helps me to go back to my why to get grounded on whether to just be brave and move forward.

The Painting Begins...

Once the “Why” is established I move forward by choosing some color palettes and pulling out all the paints. It gets really messy as the painting begins!

Going Deeper in God's Word

After I’ve completed my paintings, the hard part begins in choosing which ones will stay. I always have more than I need and there are only 12 months, so some have to be put aside to use in other projects.

While painting for this project,  I realized that I was so drawn to the richer deeper colors! I felt some concern that maybe my ladies wouldn’t care for these darker colors, so I did a lot of prayerful pondering over all this. 

Experiencing a Richer Relationship with God

I realized I kept thinking about the words deeper and richer and it hit me that for me, these deeper & richer colors are symbolic of me and my spiritual journey,  calling me to go Deeper in God’s Word to experience a Richer Relationship with Him.  I think that’s what He’s calling me to do, therefore, it naturally flows over into my artwork.  I hope you will join me in this.  

How I Select the Scripture Verses for Each Month

The verse selection requires even more prayerful pondering!

I went back through my journals and started making index cards for the verses that I noticed kept showing up in my journals. I finished with stacks of index cards of verses. 

It was so hard to choose only 12! I do this part prayerfully. I really don’t know who will end up with these calendars, nor do I know what they will need or want to be reminded of in 2022. I spread them all out and kept pulling out and putting back in the stack until I settled on 13….I was able to add an extra one for the cover! 

Grounded in God's Identity

As we begin our spiritual journey, it is important to understand our new identity in Christ, but in order to mature in our faith and even stand in storms, it’s vital to be grounded in knowing God’s identity,

His characteristics and His Word. My prayer is that these verses I chose for us in 2022 will be beautiful reminders and will stir a desire to know God and His Word on a deeper level to experience the joy of a richer relationship with Him!

Matching the Verse & the Designs

The next step is matching the verses up to the designs.  Once that process is complete it’s much easier to finish the calendar layout by assigning each month a design. There will be many proofs and edits before we finally have it ready to send to the printing company.  

A Ready-to-Frame Art Print for Each Month

We kept the same design layout for this year’s calendar, so that at the end of each month you will have an 8x10 art print ready to frame in a standard frame! I love supporting other artists by buying their calendars and I really love the ones that have artwork that can be framed, so I wanted to be sure to do ours that way, too. 

Sincerely, 

Pam Coxwell | From the Heart Art