I’ve been wanting to get more organized by adding a wall calendar to my office. I love the look of the clear acrylic wall calendars and figured it would be easy enough to make my own since I have a Silhouette cameo. In this post I’ll walk through my process to make a DIY acrylic wall calendar and share my design in a free SVG file that you can use with your vinyl cutting machine.
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How to make an acrylic wall calendar
Materials
Vinyl (roll or (3) 12″x12″ sheets)
Tools
Drill
Step drill bit (or 1/2″ twist bit)
Vinyl Cutting Machine (Silhouette or Cricut)
Tape measure
The materials for this project cost me less than $20.
Step 1 – Drill holes in acrylic for standoffs
Since I used an 18″x24″ Acrylic Sheet, I went with the ¾” diameter x 1” depth standoffs. In order to attach the acrylic wall calendar to the wall you’ll need to first drill holes for the standoffs to feed through.
Each of the holes were centered 1” in both directions from each corner.
To drill the holes you can use either a hand drill or a drill press.
I like to use as step drill bit when drilling through acrylic since it creates a clean hole without any cracks. A standard twist bit can work as well but you’ll probably have a small crack around the hole. I have a whole post about step drill bits if you want to learn more about them.
When drilling holes in acrylic I would recommend keeping the protective sheet on until after you’ve drilled the hole.
I used a step drill bit with a max diameter of 1/2″ to create a 1/2″ diameter hole.
This is what it looks like with the protective plastic sheet still on.
Once you peel it up you’ll have a perfect hole!
Step 2 – Cut the vinyl
You can either design your own calendar or download my free template from the links below.
License info: 100% free for personal use only. Files cannot be resold, modified or used commercially.
For this step you will need a vinyl cutting machine such as a Silhouette or Cricut.
Be sure to select a vinyl color that will contrast with your wall color. For example, if you have light walls you will want a dark vinyl. If your walls are dark you would be better off with a light colored vinyl so that you can easily see it.
I uploaded my svg file to silhouette studio and then sized the calendar so that the height would fit on a single 12”x12” vinyl sheet. As you can see below, the calendar is too wide to fit on a single sheet.
On a second 12″x12″ sheet of vinyl I cut Friday-Saturday and the lines for the to do list.
I used one final sheet of vinyl to cut the words “Month” and “To do”
Step 3 – Transfer vinyl to the acrylic
Be sure to clean the acrylic before you apply the vinyl. Mine attracted a bunch of fuzz and dog hair so I cleaned it with some Windex before applying any vinyl.
I used transfer paper to properly align the two parts of the calendar and trimmed the excess as needed.
The bottom left of the calendar was spaced 2” from the left side and bottom of the acrylic sheet as shown below.
I used little scrap pieces of vinyl to mark the corners and keep the vinyl as straight as possible as I transferred it to the acrylic.
Once the first part of the calendar was transferred, I lined up the second part and the to do lines. Lastly, I added the “month” and “to do” titles.
Step 4 – Hang calendar on wall
Position the calendar where you want on your wall and then mark in the center of each of the 4 holes with a pencil.
Drill 4 holes in your wall where you have marked to install the wall anchors.
Attach the back portion of the standoff with the screws that were provided.
Place a rubber washer on each side of the acrylic sheet and then screw in the front portion of the standoffs to hold the acrylic sheet in place.
Step 5 – Write on your DIY acrylic wall calendar
You can use standard dry erase markers to write on your calendar. Dry erase markers that aren’t permanent can be wiped off using a rag or paper towel.
There you have it! This project was super simple and inexpensive. I’m excited to have a dedicated place to track my to-do items and hopefully it’ll help me stay on top of them better. I like that I won’t have to continue buying new calendars every year since I can just update it myself for each month.
Other DIY organization projects:
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Thanks so much for stopping by!
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SO impressive! Looks very professional –love it! Thanks for sharing at Vintage Charm. Pinned. xo Kathleen
Thank you Kathleen. 🙂
wow, it’s a cool glider, I really want to repeat this thing, you can do all sorts of things, for example, keep track of all kinds of expenses. Just a question, why did you use Plexiglas for this product? it is not always comfortable to work with it, it often overheats, melts. Thought. this diy is not for the most beginners, but for people who know how to work with the material
Thanks. It’s a precut sheet of plexiglass so this is definitely a beginner DIY project. You just need to drill holes in it which is super easy.