In-sta-sanely Easy

Ok ok, so my Instagram play on one of my most overused favorite words (that'd be 'insanely') didn't really work. Forgive me. It's Monday and I've been up since long before the sun.

Regardless of my mediocre subject line, I'm excited to share two quick little projects I whipped up over the last couple weeks using some of my favorite Instagram photos from last year!

First up are some fun little magnets that I made in literally 10 minutes by arranging a ton of my favorite pics in a grid, printing it out and spray mounting the paper to a couple sheets of magnet "paper" that I had laying around from a vendor. A few minutes trimming with an exacto knife left me with enough magnets to cover nearly the entire freezer and brought a fun burst of color into the kitchen.

The magnets aren't actually strong enough to hold anything up, but I'm in love with them nonetheless. I think I'll move some of them to the side of the fridge and take them out of my very specific grid eventually, but for now the orderly fashion that they're in helps keep my minor OCD at bay.

Next up is my DIY 2013 calendar, which is proudly hanging at my desk today. I figured since January is already half over it was about time I take down the sad looking December calendar sheet that was still hanging at my desk, so I threw this little guy together last week and finally printed it at home last night on some white cardstock. The lack of big squares to write appointments and the like in obviously makes this calendar more about form than function, but I'm ok with that since I rarely actually write dates down anyways. 

For the calendar, I went with all types of scenery and detail pictures, rather than fun and goofy people shots from over the months so that it would look appropriate at my desk. You can spot one of my very favorite photos on the July page (bottom left) - a teen spotted these huge letters on a fence in Detroit when we were there doing service work last summer and it's been such a powerful image for me since that trip.

So there you have it - two super quick DIY's that finally got some pictures off my phone/camera and printed out to actually be enjoyed! It's so odd that in this digital age pictures circulate all over Facebook and other social networks, but are rarely actually printed out anymore for people to see. I remember being in college and taking the bus to Walmart to develop our pictures from a weekend out and about and being giddy with excitement over flipping through them and reliving those moments for the first time. Now, pictures are uploaded to my computer and I rarely even get around to sharing them. Maybe I should add "print some pictures!!" to my 2013 resolutions?

Happy Monday!