Block Print Leaves Calendar

I’ve always been a plant lady. My very first job (at the age of 12) was at a plant nursery. I watered all the plants, deadheaded them, and repotted when it was time for bigger pots. I probably got paid $6 an hour but I would’ve done it for free honestly. I LOVED repotting plants. Getting my hands in the dirt and breaking up their roots before transplanting them into their new home. Grabbing handfuls of dirt to add to the bigger pots. All while being outside in the sunshine. My 12 year old self was in heaven. I absolutely loved it there. 

This love for plants and nature is clearly evident in all my work. When I sat down to design calendars for 2020 I knew I wanted one of them to be heavily plant based. I’ve been really inspired by different leaf shapes this year so I started sketching down that route. I’m also very inspired by texture which led me to the decision to make my leaves into block prints. After unsuccessfully trying to make a “block print like” texture on my iPad for HOURS, I went rummaging through my old art supplies to see if I still had any block printing materials. Not surprisingly, I did. My husband lovingly calls me an art nerd, and any good art nerd has a mini Michael’s store in their basement. Anyone else??!

I began carving leaves, and I was instantly transported into my 12 year old self’s happy place. Enveloped in a cloud of plant bliss. I had SO much fun carving and hand printing each leaf! And the end results were exactly what I was picturing in my head. The textures and imperfections were absolutely on point. What started out as something I thought would be a quick, easy, mess free (albeit boring) iPad project turned into a very messy middle-school-like art experiment, full of innocent imagination and uninhibited creativity. It’s not very often that we are able to feel so uninhibited as adults and fully immerse ourselves into one project without being pulled around in 97 different directions or worrying about what we’re doing next. 

These block print leaf calendars are my favorite child for 2020. I think it’s partially from the cathartic experience I had making them and partially because they are exactly as I had envisioned them in my head. Here’s to channeling our inner 12 year old selves in 2020, finding more ways to become uninhibited, and being able to give our full selves to one direction at a time.