Calendar Tutorial with Cathy

The year is drawing to a close and it's now definitely time to be thinking of getting your dates in order for next year. Well that's where my tutorial today might just help you out a bit. Why not make your own desk calendar so you never loose track of the date, plus this is the perfect project to de-stash your ever growing pile of leftover scraps.

I've made a few of these calendars over the past few months and have given them as presents. They can easily be custom made to suit your style. How's my how to:

1. Collect old cardboard boxes and cut them to the size you want. I made each of my pages 17cm squares (just because that's the size I could get out of the cardboard I had on hand). You will need 7 pages... a front and back cover plus the six months.

2. Dig around in your stash and find cardstock and pattern papers in the colours you like. I used some plains and some florals and trimmed them all to 17cm high. Where the pieces where smaller, I joined two together to make a pattern. I also trimmed some old book paper for some of my pages.

3. Next up I punched and diecut lots (and I mean lots!) of flowers, circles, stars, butterflies, tags out of all sorts of leftover scraps. This is one way of de-stashing your ever growing pile of scraps. These pieces I used in abundance on my pages to pull everything together.

4. I found a blank calendar template that I like (it's from Heidi Swapp from a few years back) and I added my own dates to it. I sized this to about 10cm wide and printed them out on an A4 cardstock. I trimmed these to size and then matted each month on a different colour cardstock (again using up some of my leftover stash).

5. I crazily decided to die cut my month letters using an alphabet die I have... this took ages (and even some maths) to make sure I had the right number of each letter in each colour. Next time I might just cut them out on my silhoutte instead! You could also use stickers or stamps if it makes life easier.

5. Once I had all my bits together I assembled the monthly pages. Here's the results:

Remember this is your calendar and you can make it however you want. My pages are simply a guide. I've added various techniques on some pages, plus extra bling, micro-beads, faux stitching, etc. Just something of interest on each page.

6. It is easiest to do one side of each cardboard sheet first to make sure that you keep the pages going in the right direction. The order will be

Front cover	January
February	March
April	May
June	July
August	September
October	November
December	Back Cover

7. Decorate the front and back covers as you like... I left mine fairly plain. They just add extra stability when you stand the calendar on your desk. (Optionally, you could leave these off and only use six pages.)

8. Once your pages are all done, punch each page at the top and then thread them onto some rings. Tie ribbons around the rings between various pages just to add extra detail.

Stand it on your desk and enjoy.

Till next time.
Cathy