The Calendar

I cannot believe how long this took me.

I bought a kit in the interests of saving time. I'm not sure it really saved that much: but it did cut down on the mess involved, it was easy to tidy away after each work session, and I certainly made fewer decisions than I would have had to make had I done this from scratch (as I have always done.) I make one "hard copy" version which I give to my Mom--then scan in the pages and make the calendars for two more which I send to relatives. I have the pages coil bound at Staples.

I chose this 2011 Calendar kit by Basic Grey. It's 8x8.

The page backgrounds are pretty much as you see them here. What I attached were the cut-outs and dimensional elements--and a few strips of paper (not very many).

I wound up using just about everything in the kit: very little was left over. Because I wanted to include the tags with the quotations, I sized my pictures to 3 1/2 x 5 (though the instructions call for 4x6). It is to the kit's credit that this caused no difficulties whatsoever--well, OK, except for April. That one was tough.

I used the instructions as a guide. The black and white instructions which came with the kit, though, were fairly useless. Fortunately Basic Grey makes a version in colour available on their web-site.

Without further ado, here are the pages:

January to April:



May to August:



September to December:

(I have no idea why cupcakes were included as the "theme" for September, nor what were supposed to be celebrating, but by the time I got to it, I didn't really care.)



Notes to self:
Punching out diecuts, cut outs and organizing the little bits: 5 hours
Assembling pages: 2 afternoons and an evening (say 13 hours)
Scanning: 2-3 hours
Making up the calendars for the other two calendars: an afternoon (say, 3-5 hours)
Printing two sets of the pictures plus the calendars: 5 hours.
Total Time spent: 28-31 hours
(This does not include choosing the pictures, having them developed, and finding the quotes.)