Wall calendar, brought to you by The Letter 'A'

I've been meaning to share this, and now that January's almost up, so I feel like a 2010 calendar will soon be old news!

A friend of mine recently acquired the initial "A" (via marriage), so for Christmas I made her this calendar:

It was a fun chance to play with my Dremel tool, and a nice way to get some more use out of a silk screen I'd already burned with the 2010 months and days.

I started with a sheet of plywood with an oak veneer from the hardware store, stained it with some Minwax in "Ebony", and made a rough tracing of where I wanted the 'A' to go. I then pulled up some examples of circus-y lettering off the 'net, and freehand Dremeled the letter. I must admit I impressed myself with my on-the-fly typography! I filled in the yellow and purple spaces with acrylic paint, and went over the engraved parts in cream-colored acrylic. As I mentioned, the numbers and months were from a silk screen I'd made for a different calendar, and I just laid the screen over and did a one-off print with regular opaque screen-printing ink. Finally, I looked at the thing and realized I'd forgotten to put the year! Duh... So, I improvised that bit at the bottom, using the same technique as for the 'A'. Glad there was an ample margin down there!

I'd like to put something up on my shop like this, where you can order a custom letter. But, obviously it's a little late for a 2010 calendar. Maybe I'll get some chalkboard paint and make noteboards. Other ideas?