Calendar Making Woes and Joys

 

 

I have a "Love / Hate" relationship with my calendars. I have been making them since my daughter turned 1. She's 12 now. That's a lot of calendars and a ton of scrapbooking!  The first year I made them, I decided the month before Christmas that I was going to make 5 handmade calendars for the grandparents, great grandparents and one for myself. I had no idea of the time and stress this gift might cause. Even those simple calendars required me working day and night. My husband became an over night scrapbooking sensation, popping eyelets through pages and stamping the month names onto the calendars...even SPETEMBER (his mom got that calendar). My initial intention with calendars was to make one, a highlight of MacLean's first year. They were so well received that I keep making new ones...every year. 

 

These calendars highlight special moments that occurred in the previous year, during that month. We had a fantastic 2016! A new puppy, growing children, my nephews starting preschool and kindergarten. I was so excited about how the calendars turned out this year! Each layout, more special than the last. This year's calendars were equally as pressed for time as the first simple one I sat down to do in 2005, the technique, however, has improved. 

I use many different scrapbooking techniques in my calendars. Each page begins with a photo, from there, I draw out colours, find coordinating papers and look for inspiration. I often find inspiration at a local scrapbooking store, The Scrapyard, its a vortex of creativity. They offer many classes and have the most wonderful scrapbookers on site. There is always someone around, willing to offer you some helpful advice or to teach you the latest technique. 

 

When I make calendar layouts, I always leave the brand strip on the bottom of the page. I bind the calendars myself and find that this extra bit of paper helps with reinforcing your coil. I later choose a coordinating paper that I can fold over the front and back of the layout to ensure a strong reinforcement. This is challenging. Not reinforcing. Mixing your patterns. The blank calendar page gets glued onto the back of your layout. Its not always easy to match the black and orange layout to whatever colour scheme you chose for your November layout. Neutral patterns come in handy for that!

 

As you can see from this photo. I opted for a black and white wood grain print, which works well with my November layout and even better with the October prints!

This year, I used so many new photo editing apps. These added even more detail and interest to my layouts. I've always loved the instagram filters but there are so many other special apps out there. A few of my favourites are "A Beautiful Mess," which is an amazing collage app and "Waterlogue," with this app you have the ability to change your photos into watercolour "paintings." A Beautiful Mess allows you to put photos into collage frames, add filters, wording, images and borders. Waterlogue, has so many different styles of watercolour that you can create photos that look like historic artworks or even comic book frames. When these two apps are used in conjunction with each other, you can create interesting pieces like this...

 

When you're rushing to create a Halloween page, having the ability to print a photo layout like this one, on an 8.5 X 11 photo page, makes it very quick to create a 12 X 12 scrapbooking layout. As you can imagine, most of the layout is covered, you only have a few details to add to your hybrid digital / handmade scrapbooking piece. 

Typically, the last layout in my calendar is a family photo in front of our tree. I was renovating for guests prior to Christmas and designing a calendar. Decorating my tree would have to come after I mailed the calendars out to two sets of grandparents. I found inspiration for my December layout in an old photo of my brother and I at Christmas and an old Christmas book, T'was the Night Before Christmas. This copy of the classic Christmas story belonged to my children's great grandmother. I couldn't help but photocopy the image of Santa in the chimney onto cardstock and fussy cut it, to add as an important vintage element on my holiday layout. I just love the way it turned out. 

 

These gifts are so personal, my mother in law's calendar features very different photos than the one for my mom. My mother's calendar is drenched with photos of her grandchildren (my neice and nephews that live so close to me). My own often features family photos of my little family unit of four. All of the layouts, however, are made from the same papers and elements and come together quickly. The first one taking 2-3 hours to create and the final one, 15 to 20 minutes to recreate. 

I hope after reading this article, you find some inspiration to sit down with your photos and make something beautiful for someone you love. This project always causes stress because I never start it early enough. I'll never stop making them though, I enjoy them way too much. 

Thanks for reading!!  Feel free to comment below with any questions or concerns, or if you just liked this Big Idea.