I like to make my own Calendars each year to give as gifts and usually, I buy the latest celebrate from Shabby Princess as the templates are really easy to use. Basically each calendar is pre-formatted, like quick pages, and all you have to do is get each month;s page, add the dates and photographs and you are done. I say that like it is easy (which is it) and doesn't take long. However, I found that it can take me two or three days (not all day everyday!) to put the calendar together. I was looking forward to seeing what Shabby Princess came up with this year, as I love her designs, but to my disappointment she just produced calendar dates!
That left me with a real quandary, whether to use an old SO calendar template, and just change the dates, or to create my own calendar form scratch. Well, since I have been giving the calendars to the same people each year, I didn't want to risk them checking back on earlier year's calendars to find out I re-used it, so decided to create my own calendars from scratch. Naive as I am, I never realised just how much time it would take to do this!
Anyhow, since I am on the hybrid CT at The Studio, I was able to use loads of their kits and I started with the 2012 calendar dates from Nibbles Skribbles (I had already used these to make my desktop calendar), coupled with the 2011 8x8 calendar and templates form Julie C Designs:
Now I know these were 2011 templates from Julie, but I loved the idea of being able to put notes on the calendar, plus it came with 8x8 templates for the layout as well. How good was that?!!! I had to squash each page template as my calendar was A4 size and took some poetic licence with each month's layout.
I used a different kit for each month and this is my final calendar. Please excuse the quality here as I was printing on plain cardstock (I had run out of the heavy weight photo paper) so the colours aren't quite right. I was really only printing to see how they looked and have actually tweaked several of them since then.
After spending what feels like months making the calendar, I really didn't have the energy to photograph all 12 pages, so this is the digital copy of each month:
I am really pleased with how it has turned out but the only problem now is finding the time to print another 15 of them out and then bind them! I always have trouble with the binding as this time of year is one of the few occasions when I get my Zutter binding machine out. Every year without fail I have to check the instruction manual to make sure I am binding everything the right way!
The kits I used were as follows:
January
|
Winter's Delight kit
|
Lara's Digi World
|
February
|
Shabby spring
|
Jen C Designs
|
March
|
Modern Baby
|
May 2011 Mega
|
April
|
Early Morning
light
|
Piggy Scraps
Design
|
May
|
Sunset
|
Piggy Scraps
Design
|
June
|
Over the rainbow
|
Snips and
Snails Designs
|
July
|
Optimistic
|
Paper Capers
Designs
|
August
|
Live, laugh, love
|
Studio collab
|
September
|
Orchard days
|
Snips and Snails
Designs
|
October
|
Rough n tumble
|
Digilicious
Designs
|
November
|
Give thanks
|
November 2011
collab
|
December
|
Decadent Season
|
Julie C Designs
and Paper Caper Designs
|
Cover
|
Lavender Love
Wedding
|
Ambowife Designs
|
All of these can be found at The Studio.
Let me know what you think of the calendar and if you make your own, I'd love to see your calendars.
Happy scrapping!
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