When a calendar tells a story.
I think I created the first calendar ten years ago.
Every year I gave my friends and clients the opportunity to cut, recompose, assemble the illustrations of each month into something else.
A way to recycle and have fun.
It all started out as a joke, I don’t even remember if anyone asked me for a calendar or if the idea came from me.
But what does it matter? Like all ideas, the important thing is to develop and implement them.
Every year I thought of a calendar with a different theme: boxes with seasonal themes to cut out and compose, illustrations to cut out and hang, comforting thoughts together with colors, paper dolls to play with.
Until 2019 every year I created a calendar that both friends and customers were looking forward to.
2019 is a line with a before and an after.
When I created the calendar you see in the picture below, always in limited edition, signed and shipped worldwide, it was September 2018.
It seems to have happened ten years ago.
For me the calendar is important, because you consult it every day for 365 days, because you write the appointments on it, because it reminds you what you have to do and above all it has to color the environment in which you hung it.
The calendar is a part of our life.
Is your whole life in a calendar, as if it were an agenda,or not?
You write important dates, appointments, certain phrases you have read and loved, messages for family members.
The calendar is a magical place, where we bring a little bit of our life.
But September 2019 arrives and I have my usual appointment with the new calendar.
Autumn is coming and I have no idea what to do, maybe I want to stop making calendars, maybe I want to change everything.
There is impatience, there are doubts, in short I do not move, and it’s the first time.
I don’t have a website I like anymore, I want to refresh the blog, I want revolution.
Suddenly everything I own seems old, useless.
A strange feeling, never felt before.
At this point I think it’s an omen.
I decide to do it anyway even if something is stopping. I even agree with a nutritionist to create a healthy calendar that brings well-being to people. There is the idea, but it is as if no concrete project comes to light.
Then a series of incredible misunderstandings and I can’t go to press for the whole of September and October, so in November I decide on a super limited edition and more problems on problems.
I change the designs all the time, I can’t give homogeneity to the idea.
In December I want to print some calendar for friends, nothing to do, I can’t find the time.
2020 skips.
At this point, at the end of a 2020 decidedly strange, hard, terrible, tiring for the whole world I think: great! fate told me that I had to skip a year!
Who would want to keep a 2020 calendar? Not me!
The 2020 calendar remains in limbo and will never come to light.
The calendar of 2021 begins to be born.
On a particularly prolific night of ideas a few weeks ago, something clicks inside me.
I inaugurated the new website, the new blog, the new e-commerce at the beginning of the pandemic, I chose the hardest and darkest moment of the century.
Yet here I am, with you, talking about colors and optimism.
Something tells me that it is time to dare, to challenge the darkness of 2020.
I want a 2021 different, new, positive, intoxicating, sparkling, full of sequins, joy, lightness, balance, freedom.
A light bulb lights up in my brain and ideas begin to float merrily.
Maybe I have to capture the moment, I think.
I choose inspiring words and collect the illustrations that have been enjoyed during the year, those for which many people have smiled, commented, rejoiced, were enthusiastic. I choose what others had already chosen.
But I like them too.
I make changes and add texts.
Words that represent fundamental values for a life worth living.
I add important and optimistic words, words that build and create a bridge to a new year, which I hope will be magnificent.
But it is not enough, I wanted to leave empty spaces, everyone can add words, thoughts, dreams.
Because we always do a calendar together.
The calendar is a work in common, where I suggest and the others complete with their own personality.
Also this time I follow the same rules.
The edition is always limited, it is always signed and there is also a surprise inside.
Which of course I do not say here, otherwise what surprise is it?
But that’s not enough, this year I also put free shipping, because I want the calendar to travel around the world and spread wellness everywhere.
And this is also a challenge.
Shipping abroad in this time is a science fiction adventure, not only for the prices, but for the millions of declarations that I have to fill in every time I ship.
A calendar is treated by customs as a strange object, not dangerous but really strange.
I don’t care, I want everyone to smile, I want the soul to lighten and the new year to be different and better.
And 2021 it is!
Together, fighting with a smile, to change the world for the better.
No more viruses, no more bad news.
Let’s start the change now!
The calendar of 2021 is called: change!
