This is a project I was thinking about doing anyway, and this class is giving me the push and great tips for getting it done. I'm basically creating a 2016 calendar of yoga-related sayings (I'm a yoga nut). 

It's obviously something I'm going to print and use, so I researched printing ideas and decided to go with a size that would fit in one of the calendar stands that looks like a CD case. You can order the cases/stands here: http://www.calendar-case.com/cd-calendar-cases.php

Here is some initial inspiration. I love vintage-style lettering but also want to incorporate visuals that are yoga-related like lotus petals and mandala elements, so that may be a challenging combination!

Here's my inital brainstorm, as far as what the months are going to say and some very basic design-y sketches (It's very messy, I know):

I'd like for the letter style, borders, design elements and eventually, colors, to make everything look cohesive, so I started by getting an idea for what the different letter styles and borders might look like. I know this may evolve as I go, and I'm not going to be crazy rigid about it. 

(sorry these are a touch blurry)

I am creating thumbnails to get ideas for each month design, but I know that if I upload all of them (for ALL 12 months), this is going to be a super long project, so I'll just upload a handful of them as I go. Here are some very messy thumbnails for January: Set your Intention.

Here is the resulting sketch:

And here is the sketch for June: Just Breathe (I'm so not going in order here!)

And a few more months:

I know that I still have some sketching to do, but I started doing some digitizing and coloring on the sketches I already have. I don't want it to seem like I'm jumping the gun, but because this is turning into a big, time-consuming project (I'm still not awesome at the lettering thing, so I spend a lot of time making mistakes! :-P), I needed to change things up and give myself some visual momentum so I could start to see what these will look like when finished. 

I played with a few color sets, but ended up creating this one and rolling with it:

After inking and scanning, I clean things up a bit in Photoshop and then move to Illustrator. Here is a vectorized version of "Just Breathe" and then some color examples.

A few more colorized months: (as a side note, I'm obviously going to add the calendar part and any texture at the very end.) 

All of the initial digitizing is done! Now, I need to get in there and tweak any elements that bug me, add the calendar parts and decide whether I want to use texture. I should probably also create a cover :-)