Calendars, Calendars, Calendars

Hi!  So I guess the theme this year was calendars!  I made a whole bunch.  Last year I made a whole bunch of little notepads and note cards for Christmas gifts.  This took me a while to do.  I made some for teachers, friends and family.  Above is the CD insert using the PTI Calendar Basics set.

The teachers' ones looked like the one above.  I used PTI's Teacher's Apple stamp set.  The calendar pages are die cut with their calendar die and all the individual calendar pages are from PTI also.  A lot of cranking of the Big Shot.

This was the first teacher calendar I made.  It was also the last one to use patterned paper cause after doing all this I couldn't fit it into the CD case!  It was too thick.  So only a few pages will fit at a time in the CD case if you embellish too much.  That's why I decided to just stamp on the cardstock instead.

I made a couple of sets using PTI's All About You stamp set with fresh snow ink.  Some of my pages got globby with the white ink.  And the ink showed up much nicer are the darker paper of course.  I tried not to put too much ink on the stamp and to wipe off the excess with a paper towel every so often.  That helped a lot to just leave clean stamped lines.  Live and learn, I suppose.  But this was inspired from Nicole Heady's calendar.  If only I had the entire Year of Flowers collection with matching cardstock and ink too . . .

Isn't this one of the cutest papers ever??  This line of papers and the paper pad from Imaginisce is so cute.  I had to make a calendar with the papers.

You can click on the photo to see the papers closer.

This paper pad set is from Wild Rose Studio.  The papers were thin so much easier to fit into the CD cases plus I didn't need to do anything to decorate the pages.  Just cut and slide in the calendar pages.  And after so much cutting, I really wanted something simple.

Lastly, I made one using pictures of my kids.  I didn't die cut the pictures.  I just trimmed some 5 x 7 photos to fit into the CD cases and taped the individual calendar pages to each one.  I taped some patterned paper behind some of the photos that were too short.  If the calendar page was too big in some cases, I just trimmed it to fit better on the photo.  I wanted to try something like this after I had seen Heather Nichols' post.  But I didn't have much time to search for pictures that had enough space for me to die cut in the right area for the calendar page to slide into.  So I thought this would save me time and frustration.

The spine of some of the CD calendars I made. In total, I think I made about 15 CD calendars and a couple of easel calendars. 

Thanks for reading this long post about calendars!  Have a great day!

An Angry Bird Christmas

Hi!  What do Angry Birds have to do with Christmas??  I have no idea but they are everywhere, aren't they?  Just stick a Santa hat on them and they are perfect for the holiday season.  My kids and lots of other kids seem to like them a lot so I decided to make tons of Angry Birds!  I had first seen this post HERE on Jenny's blog about some Angry Birds she had made and she provides the link to the original source.  I just had to find my own way of making them with the dies/punches that I have.

So here's a photo of 47 Angry Birds made from just thin cardstock.  I chose thin cardstock so I could cut more than one sheet at a time and so it would move faster.  I used Spellbinders circle nestabilities for the bodies.  The beak is a cat/bat ear from PTI's Halloween sweet treats dies set.  The feathers on the head is from My Favorite Things daisy die.  The eyes are punches and the eyebrows are hand cut.  Yes, that was the most painful part.  Hand cutting all those eyebrows!  But without them, they wouldn't be Angry Birds!

So my 2 older kids and I decided that bookmarks would be the best to give away since they are older now.  And if I had just stuck these on a package with candy it would surely have been tossed away.  My daughter gave her class instructions not to throw them away.  Hahaha.  She also helped me with stringing on the twine and sticking the labels on.

A little close up photo.  The bookmark die is from PTI.

We tied on some candy canes with more twine and they were set to go.

I made Angry Birds for my youngest too.  He's too young to read so I decided to make ornaments for them instead.  And these are made from FUN FOAM!!  These came out so fun!  The green tag is PTI's Tag Sale #4 die.  We tied on some ribbon and bells, and added candy canes in the bags too.  My youngest kid's teacher dressed up as an Angry Bird for Halloween too!

So I am finally finished with the kids' stuff.  But I still have teacher gifts for my younger son's teachers to wrap.  Thank goodness I still have the weekend to finish up.  But I hate waiting til the last minute.

I have to share this photo of the pictures/cards my youngest made for his teachers.  He keeps requesting that I post his projects on my blog too.  Future blogger, I suppose.

Oh and if you haven't checked it out yet, I have been "spied" on TGF!  See HERE.  It's my first time ever being spied.  So if you've got time, play along please!

Thanks so much for reading and hope you're enjoying the holiday season!