A Calendar's Story

I think we've mentioned thqat I have trouble with repetative projects, but I keep being drawn to them as repetition is so comfortable for the viewer and such a quick way to capture a story. This time, I may have found the idea blend for me-- Calendar pages.

KI Memories has these new, lovely, calendar pages. They come in many shapes and are lovely to see and the stitching around the edges is the perfect finishing touch. I have seen them used many different ways, but my favorite version is by Lazy Dynamics. I have decided to adopt her calendar page approach to suit myself. I think, actually, that this could work well for the non-scrapbooker that wants to save just a snapshot of this moment in time as well. Mine, as you can see, are sprinkled with embellishments and layers around the titles. This is not necessary, although pretty and it makes me happy. If you wanted, you could just grab a calendar page, or print one out of your calendar system, slip it in your page protector and be done. Moment captured.

Believe it or not, I have January - April filled in and am just awaiting April's photos to have them complete.  Even if this is as far as I get, I am a very happy crafter!  If you want to try to follow along with my methodology, here's my formula for the 2011 Richards family calendar project.

Supplies: They will vary, but here is my base

12 KI Memories Sew Cute Calendar pages -- 2 each of six designs, all procured locally at Paper Crown.
Glue Dots® Craft Dots 
Brown Pen
3 approximately 1x1 inch photos per month
12 pieces cardstock to back the scalloped pages (optional, of course)
American Crafts Thickers for the names of the months
Ormolu tag (about 1 per month thus far)
Assorted other tags, ribbons, buttons, brads, penants, twine and other embelishments that strike my fancy.

Method:
- Add the dates to the blank page
- Refer to blog, google calendar, and picasa albums to fill in activities for the month (No, I do not remember it all even though all this was just in the last four months. I am aging).
- Select area for the title, layer papers, ribbon or tags and add name of month and year.
-Add photos to empty days. I am trying to always include a picture of the kids and the third picture rotates, although so far it has been my nephews.
- Sprinkle page with pretties here and there. (Glue Dots are great at holding all these random bits down - such a fan). Some months the sprinkled pretties have just been a few things. In February, quite a few butterflies did escape onto the page as they are wont to do.

That's it! You can do as many or as few of the steps as you like. You can do this!

I wrote this blog post while participating on the Glue Dots design team.