Starting as I mean to go on!

Starting as I mean to go on. Well that's the idea anyway. All last year I kept thinking "I really must get back to scrapbooking", I was always 'last minute' with the birthday cards I needed, and Christmas cards were a panic in November.

So this year I intend to; 1.  Enter at least two Christmas card challenges every month, and 'batch make' them whenever they are suitable; 2. Make some birthday cards ahead of when they are needed so I always have a few in store; 3. Make time for other crafts, paper as well as other media.

Today I have gone for the other papercrafting and I have made two calendars. I like to have one in the kitchen for noting down appointments etc, and one here in my craft-room showing birthdays and other occasions that I will need a card for.

I recently bought a digi calendar kit from one of the scrapbook kit designers.

It has all the month names in several formats, as well as the dates arranged in columns, or blocks (in several languages, but English is enough for me!). There were also a set of 'distressed style' papers, and some overlays for adding flowers, leaves, swirls etc. So all I had to do was chose a style and layout, and then add photos of people and events throughout last year. 

Here I am showing four of the pages picked at random. Each month I chose a topic, and found between three and six photos around it. It was hard to chose just a few to include, but I couldn't use them all.

I printed them all onto A4 sheets of 160gm paper, and bound them with my Zutter, which I bought with such good intentions. Sadly it is very under-used, but at least it had a little outing today!

This calendar will be kept in my room where I can see it daily, and smile at the memories it contains.

Other months show Christmas, of course, our New Year's Eve celebration, visits from family members, and singing in our choir.

For the kitchen calendar I chose a different, more simple style. This time I went for the long skinny shape, and I used twelve photos of the sky. 

Followers of my Friday posts on my other blog will know that I can't resist taking photos of the sky, usually at sunrise or sunset, but sometimes in the day as well. Because we have a lot of cloudless days, we don't get that many nice sunsets, but when we do, they can be quite dramatic. It was very difficult choosing just twelve from my collection but here are the ones I used.

Aren't they wonderful!? They have made a lovely calendar and it is already hanging in my kitchen with January's appointments filled in. Next week we have the Three Kings fiesta in the village (Epiphany). Usually the town hall gives each house a programme of events with a basic calendar on the back showing all the 'red days' which are the Spanish public holidays. When I get that, I shall use a little stamp and a red ink pad to mark them all on my calendar to remind me on which days all the shops will be closed. Always useful to know!

I guess when the shops are overflowing with calendars this looks like a lot of unnecessary work, but we don't get many nice ones in our shops; The one I bought is made of such poor paper I am not sure it could be written on with a pen, and also it is nice to personalise them. So I am happy with my days work, and feel I have taken one small step towards my new crafting regime.