Ha! I was maybe a little over-ambitious! Turns out each calendar has space for 14 months, and eventually you run out of simple page ideas. Who would have thought? Plus, I was under the impression that my Cricut Expression and all the cartridges collected between my mom and I would be so helpful and make this project so much better. Again, wrong! By the time I finished I was so frustrated with the stupid Cricut that I was actually glad to have to put it in the box and back out in the garage (because we don't have room for it anywhere inside the house)! My biggest frustration was that the different cartridges all seem to cut differently. I planned from the beginning to cut all the month names the same size (1 1/2"), but each set of letters seemed to come out just a slightly different size. Some were much more obvious than others. Even some things from the same cartridge, set on the same size, were way out of proportion with each other. I have a whole sandwich baggie of pieces that were the wrong size, but I couldn't bring myself to throw away. Some of my smaller frustrations included paper getting ruined instead of cut, paper not getting cut at all, replacing the blade, and just keeping the creativity flowing in general.
Now, don't get me wrong, I know that sounds like a lot of complaining. But seeing the finished products made it all worth it (even if was at 2:30 AM the morning we were supposed to head out of town)! And seeing how excited the girls were to open them was even better! And, just this past weekend, I noticed while at my one sister-in-law's house that she actually hung her's up and had written important dates on it! The warm-fuzzies made all the work and frustration so worth it! Anyway, now on to the good stuff!
While working, I ended up finding a couple websites that were pretty helpful, that I thought I'd share. The first being, of course, Archiver's. Specifically, the ideas pages. I didn't actually outright copy anything, but when I did get stuck it gave me some ideas for combining things or what colors to start with, or even just sparked a thought. I also found this site, which was awesome! I was trying to use at least two different solid colors for accents on each page, just to give it a spark since it was not my typical scrapbook pages, so this was really great when I was staring at some paper thinking, "What other color goes with this?"
So, for anyone interested in scrapbooking, my basic game plan here was to have each page have a spot for one 4x6 photo of their choice. I left the pictures open simply because that way they could make it personal (and possibly save them) and, frankly, I knew I wouldn't be able to find enough pictures. Now, this in itself was a challenge because I generally put more than one picture on a page when I scrapbook. I also planned to use patterned paper as the background and solids for the accents, matching the name of the month to one of the accent colors. That way the pages were exciting, but not overwhelming. This is also not my typical style, and turned out to be more difficult that I expected. But with one trip to Hobby Lobby, and a lucky streak hitting their paper at 3 for $1, I managed. I also cut little labels for the important holidays and for the 12 family birthdays in red to glue in the squares on the calendar. And I wrote the dates with scrapbook-safe permanent markers, because it was just faster and easier. They turned out great (if I do say so myself) and I was pleased, though if I ever do this again, I'll have to start in like, June. So, here are a few of my favorite pages! If I left anything out, feel free to ask!
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