Waka Waka Waka

Pacman chomps his way through the month on this magnetic calendar. The dots are numbered with the dates; ghost, fruit and power pellets can be used to mark special occasions, birthdays, deadlines or other dates that you may need to remember throughout the month. This is a perpetual calendar so once all the dots are removed, you can move onto the next level, I mean month and reset the dots.

Step 1: READY!

What you will need:

A piece of sheet metal
Yellow and white craft foam
Magnets (I used a thin magnet sheet and larger circles that I got from a dollar store)
Polymer clay
Black and blue paint (or instead of blue paint, blue model striping tape)
Metal primer and varnish
Paint brushes
Hole punch
Scissors
Pencil and ruler
Glue

Step 2: Preparing the Sheet Metal

Cut your sheet of metal to the size that you want, mine was ~17.5 cm X 20 cm.
You can either bend over the edges or grind them smooth after cutting.
To bend the sheet so that it can stand up, mark a line along the width of the metal about 4-5 cm from the bottom
Line up the mark on the edge of a something straight and solid (eg. a table edge) and bend the bottom edge back more than 90 degrees. This should enable it to stand on it's own and slanting back a bit.

Step 3: Painting the Metal Sheet

I applied a metal primer first on the sheet metal before painting it with a glossy black acrylic paint. Adding a coat of varnish once the paint has dried is a good idea since moving the magnets on the calendar would likely scratch the paint over time.

Step 4: Blue Stripes

I had originally intended to paint the blue stripes but didn't think my hand was steady enough to get it to look decent. Fortunately I found some blue model striping tape that would do the job. I first applied tape around the edge of the calendar on all four sides, it is difficult to make rounded corners with this tape so I just cut the ends at an angle.

For the calendar week separations I measured the height of the calendar and divided it by five to determine the spacing between them and marked it with masking tape along the outer edge. The separations were made with two layers of blue tape with space in between, again I tried to make the ends rounded by cutting the tape at an angle and applying a small piece to connect the two lines.

Step 5: 1pt Dots

The small dots that Pacman chomps have the calendar dates on them. So we will need thirty-one in total. I made these by punching holes from white craft foam with a hole punch.
With the same hole punch, I punched out thirty-one circles from a thin magnet sheet, and glued them to the white foam dots.
Number the dots from one to thirty-one with a black marker.

Step 6: 50pts Dots

The 50pts dots or power pellets are larger circles of craft foam with a hole in the centre so that they can slip around the date dots made in the previous step. They can be added to any day of the month and placed anywhere on the calendar (I put mine on Fridays). To make these simply cut out a circle from white craft foam roughly twice the size as the smaller dots and punch a hole in the centre with the hole punch, there is no need to add a magnet.

Step 7: Pacman and Fruit

I made Pacman, the ghosts and the fruit from polymer clay, but you can use craft foam to make them instead.

Pacman

Take a piece of yellow polymer clay and knead it for a couple of minutes.
Roll it flat to a thickness of about 3-4mm.
You can use a bottle cap for a cookie cutter to cut out a circle of clay. My Pacman has a diameter of 2.5cm, you can adjust the size depending on how big your calendar is.
With a knife cut out a wedge for the mouth.

Fruit (Cherries)

For the fruit I used red and green clay, knead each for a couple of minutes.
Form two small balls of red clay and stick them together.
Roll two small pieces of green clay into little noodles.
Stick a noodle onto each red ball and connect them together at the other end to form the stems.
You can make a couple of these or try making the other fruit.

Step 8: Ghosts

To make the ghosts similar in shape I formed a cookie cutter from a tealight tin. There are four ghosts red (Blinky), pink (Pinky), blue (Inky) and orange (Clyde) plus the transformed ghost which are a dark blue colour (I just made two of these).

Make these guys by rolling thin a piece of clay of the appropriate colour (or blend colors to get the right shade) to about 3-4mm thick.
If you made a cookie cutter like I did use it to cut out the ghost shape.
With a knife cut out the jagged edge for the bottom of the ghost
Roll a couple of small balls of white clay and place onto the ghost's face (dark blue ghosts don't need these).

Step 9: Bake and Add Details

Bake the clay characters and fruit according to the package directions.
Once they have cooled draw in the faces of the dark blue ghosts with a white marker.
Draw in the pupils of the other ghosts (they have shifty eyes and are often looking sideways at Pacman).
Glue magnets to the back of all of the characters and fruit.

Step 10: Days of the Week

I used a Pacman-like font for the days of the week (which I found with a Google search). Print out the letters, trace them onto yellow craft foam and cut them out. You will need two 'S's and two "T's (or you can use a Su and Th for Sunday and Thursday). Draw the details on the foam with black felt.

Step 11: Adding the Days

The letters for the days of the week are placed along the top of the calendar. Measure the width of the calendar and divide by seven, and mark the increments so that the letters will be evenly spaced. Use a small amount of glue on the back of the letters, along the bottom and attached to the calendar.

Once the glue had dried, place the date dots onto the calendar according to the present month and put Pacman on today's date. Use the ghost and fruit to mark special occasions or use as event reminders. Store extra characters and dots that have been removed by attaching them to the back of the calendar for safe keeping.