Make a Scrapbook Calendar for 2009

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A Great Holiday Gift :  A Hand Made  Scrapbook Calendar

Three calendars made with this tutorial

A hand made scrapbook calendar is pure gold to the recipient. It's a hand made gift that is both functional and attractive -- and, if you personalize it or customize it to your recipient's taste and personality, you have created a gift that will be saved and stored long after 2009 has come and gone.

Supply List

1. The Chipboard Album

The chipboard album used in the video demonstration below is the Maya Road Binder Book. It is six inches by six inches and contains eight chipboard pages. It is essentially a ring binder.  You can get the Maya Road Binder Album at Two Peas in a Bucket  The binder album comes in various sizes, most of which you could modify for this project easily.

If the Maya Road Binder Book is not available,  any six inch album with eight pages will do.  You may have to modify the instructions to accommodate whatever album you are using.  If there are fewer than eight pages, add your own by cutting a six inch by six inch piece of chipboard.

You could also make your own chipboard album. To do this, you would need enough chipboard for the front and back covers. Cut it with a craft knife.  If desired, you could make the eight pages out of chipboard as well, OR you could simply make pages out of two pieces of card stock glued together. To bind your own book, punch three holes through the covers and all pages. Run binder rings through the holes, or bind and tie with ribbon or other fabric. For another suggestion, if you have a binding machine such as the Zutter, you could definitely use that, OR take your completed book to an office supply service and have them add a wire binding.

Any of these options will work well and will give you a lovely craft item for the Holiday season.

2 The Calendar Template

The calendar templates used in this tutorial are Word documents, created and distributed free of charge at Win Calendar Word Calendar Templates

To use these templates for this project, you will need to resize them in Word. Five inches in width by four and a half inches in height works well.

You can find many other calendar templates online if these are not to your liking. Running a Google search for "calendar templates 2009" gives you many choices.

As an alternative to printing your calendar pages, you could also find a small calendar and remove the pages to use in this project.
 

3 Other Supplies and Tools

You will also need:

• 12 sheets of card stock. The 8 1/2" by 11" card stock lets you print two calendar months on one sheet. Use as many colors as desired, or use one color for all. This tutorial uses six colors of card stock (white, orange, green, violet and yellow).
• 1 sheet patterned scrapbook paper or patterned card stock. One 12" by 12" sheet covers the front and back cover, both inside and outside.
• 4 additional 12" by 12" sheets of patterned scrapbook paper. One sheet covers four page surfaces, and you have 16 surfaces to cover.  You can mix and match the patterns or use only one pattern. For best results, coordinate the colors with the colors of card stock calendar pages, and try to keep within one color family.
• Miscellaneous embellishments and trims for the pages and covers. This project uses paper flowers, punched flowers, brads, eyelets, ribbon with printed words, Outline stickers colored in glaze pens, rhinestones, felt flowers, metal embellishments and alphabet rub-ons.
• Craft paint (white or cream) and a foam brush
  
• Cutting tools such as paper trimmer and scissors
• Glues and Adhesives.

Video Demonstration :  Making a Scrapbook Calendar

Month and Color Chart for the Calendar Pages

In the video tutorial, two calendar pages were printed on one sheet of card stock. Two Month Labels were also printed on each sheet. The month labels  on each sheet of card stock were not the same months as the calendar pages so as to allow color variation.

This is the color scheme used:

Color Card Stock	Months	Label
White	January and July	February and August
Orange	February and August	March and September
Violet	March and September	April and October
Blue	April and October	May and November
Yellow	May and November	June and December
Green	June and December	July and January

Birthstones and Flowers for the Scrapbook Calendar

In this project, the monthly birthstone and flowers have been added to the calendar layout.  These are the stones and flowers used:

Month	Birthstone	Flower
January	Garnet	Carnation
February	Amethyst	Violet
March	Aquamarine	Daffodil
April	Diamond	Sweet Pea, Daisy
May	Emerald	Lily-of-the-Valley
June	Pearl	Rose
July	Ruby	Larkspur
August	Onyx, Peridot	Poppy
September	Sapphire	Aster
October	Opal, Tourmaline	Marigold
November	Topaz	Chrysanthemum
December	Turquoise, Zircon	Narcissus, Holly

Alternative Style for the  Scrapbook Calendar

The original calendar project was created by Clipper Street, a scrapbook store in Vancouver, Canada. In the original design, the calendar pages were printed onto transparency paper instead of card stock. After printing, the back side of the transparency (the rough side) was colored with smears of craft paint in shades that matched the scrapbool paper used to cover the page.

This technique is remarkably attractive and one that you may want to try.

It was not used in the demonstration for three reasons. Transparency paper is fairly costly to purchase, it may not be available in all locations and because not all printers will do a good job of printing onto it.

If you do use this technique, remember to print on the shiny side of the transparency, not the rough side.

Tips for Writing "This Year" on Calendar Cover

The demo used alphabet rub-ons to add the text "This Year" to the calendar cover.   Alternatively, you could use stickers, you could use a stamp, use stamped alphabets, write by hand, use die cut alphabets or use computer generated text.

Choosing a Theme for Your Scrapbook Calendar

You may wish to create a theme for your calendar. In the video tutorial provided, the project's theme is "Things to Appreciate in 2009."  In the picture shown at the top of the page, the calendar with the yellow/cream colored cover has a theme, "Reasons to Visit Vancouver in 2009."  It contains scenic photographs of the city. The calendar with the green floral cover has a theme, 'Remembering 2008". It contains photographs of the recipient and her family taken in 2008.  Your theme could be anything. You are limited only by your imagination.

Recommended Resources

For more craft projects and video tutorials, please visit  Scrapping by Design