Lunar Year of the Horse Calendars

Happy New Year! These are the Year of the Horse refrigerator magnet calendars I put together for 2026.My paper pieced horse was created from a coloring book image I had on file of an unicorn. In the process of rendering it into a cutting file, I removed its horn to create the horse I needed to use on my calendars. I used Arial Black font to create the numbers, and the blossoms, pine, and bamboo images were cut from older cutting files created in the past. The horse and numbers were layered multiple times with black, gold, and red shadows and adhered with foam tape to create dimension. Magnetic strips backed with foam tape were glued on to the backs of each calendar. And happily, my dear friend Pat helped  once again this year with the assembly so I could get sixty of these done on time.

This year, I purchased the small calendars I used from Gracious Bee Greetings on Etsy. Their prices are reasonable and the quality of their calendars exceeds ones I've used in the past. I will definitely use them as my source from now on.

Here is the top fold card I made which doubled as my New Years/Thank You card sent to friends and family. I used an Asian border image from FreePik and did a little bit of editing to get it to fit nicely onto the top and bottom edges of my card front. In the center, I used my Silhouette to cut a stenciled image of a horse head from a brush stroke image rendered into a cutting file. Gold mirror cardstock was used to mat the front panel so that the gold would show through the stencil cut. This was adhered to a pearlescent gold cardstock base, then finally matted onto a piece of red foil board.

Each calendar was placed into clear cello bags and adhered to the inside of the cards with double stick tape. I added my sentiment matted in red foil board to the top of the card.

I added a photo of our family to the back of the cards and printed up sheets of matching stationery so I could write our thank you notes to include with the cards.