This month at Canvas Corp Brands design team headquarters, we were given an assignment to design a project that would compliment an existing product line. It could be any product line from a toy company to home furnishings.

My husband and I are planning a big move to another apartment and I was browsing the Ikea gallery the other day. I really liked one of their rooms. Just about everything is in shades of grey, including the Kvarnvik box series. These boxes come in several shapes and are covered with interlaced paper string that looks just like the grey burlap fabric from Canvas Corps.

I decided to make a calendar, with the base covered in the grey burlap and a dodecahedron calendar sitting on the base. In this tutorial, we will draw the template for the dodecahedron calendar in Illustrator^R.

Dodecahedrons have twelve sides, one for each month, and each side is a pentagon shape. So let's start with the pentagon. As I usually do, I drew the complete dodecahedron template in pieces. Once I got that perfected, I used it as a guide to draw a clean cut line that will become the SVG cut file. Our calendar will be about 4 inches in size.

1. To create the first pentagon, use the Polygon tool and set the Radius to 1.65 inch and Sides to 5.
   
   
2. Copy/paste the polygon and flip is vertically. This will become our center polygon.
   
   
3. The polygon is still in your Clipboard. So, paste another copy. Move the edge of that polygon to an edge of our center polygon, so that the point of the polygon is pointing outward. Repeat this for the other three sides of our center polygon.
   
   
4. Our next step is to draw tabs at the right and left sides of each of the outer polygons. We want to add one at the bottom left and one at the top right sides.
   
   That is one half of our calendar. Let's make the other half.
   
   
5. Select everything and copy. Paste a copy into a new layer.
   
   
6. While still selected, click Object - Transform - Reflect - Horizontal. Even though the command says Horizontal, this will flip the image vertically. To assemble the calendar, the two parts will be attached together.
   
   
7. In the final image, I've decided where each month's calendar should be placed. I wanted the calendar to sit flat with the pointed edge of the polygon pointing downward. Notice the direction of the text on each polygon.
   
   

The next step is to grab one of the polygons and use it as a template as we design the monthly calendars.

Ikea Kvarnvik Box Series
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/living_room/tools/coli/roomset/20154_cols28a/

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