2011 Calendar Blog Hop

Hello and Welcome to the 2011 Calendar Blog Hop hosted by Karelj at One by One the Flamingos are Stealing My Sanity.  Karelj will be giving away a brand new Cricut Designer's Calendar Cartridge to one lucky winner.  All you have to do is leave a comment on every stop along the hop with a way for her to contact you.  She will be selecting a winner using random.org on December 31st.  The winner will be announced on her blog, as well as contacting the winner personally.

Hopefully, you have arrived from Celeste at Touched by a butterfly.   If you haven't head back her direction to start at the beginning. 

I will be showing you two calendar layouts today.  One for January and one for September.  Sorry for the picture overload, but I wanted to make sure I was explaining myself well.

For January's layout I did a winter theme.  I started with a piece of patterned paper that had one large snowflake on the bottom corner.  I decided to fussy cut around the snowflake so I could mount it to white cardstock.

I then cropped three pictures (2 at roughly 2.5x4 and 1 at roughly 4x4) and mounted them on glitter pink cardstock.  I then added the pictures and snowflake to white cardstock.  I then tucked some of the pictures underneath the snowflake to add some more dimension. 

From there I punched several snowflakes out for the leftover blue of the original paper, chocolate cardstock and the glitter pink cardstock in two different sizes.  Both punches were Martha Stewart punches I bought at Michael's.  (One is even on clearance right now because it is considered a Christmas item)  I added those throughout the LO. 

After adhering all of the snowflakes, I add some extra little bling to the centers for good measure.



I felt like the top corner was missing something so I decided to add some ribbon.  I thought this would be the perfect place for the month tile. 

At the last minute I decided it needed a title.  I was thinking at the end of the year, I can remove the January and add the LO directly to an album.

The final page.

For the calendar page, I started with white cardstock.  With a pencil, I lightly sketched out a square grid at 1.5" squares from top to bottom.  From the side to side, I drew my first line at 0.75 and then every line after that at 1.5" all the way across. From there I used some old letter and number stamps that I had to add the days of the week and numbers.  I added in some ribbon on the top and some snow stickers to carry the theme.  The only holidays I selected to add to the calendar were Martin Luther King, Jr day and New Year's Day.

I then used regular old fashioned Elmer's glue to draw the vertical lines and add Martha Stewart's pink glitter on top.  I liked it with out the horizontal lines so I called it a day. 

I went back and erased all pencil lines before I had a finished product.

For September's pages, I decided to go with something much more simple.  I love fall!  For me, this is the best time of the year.  I used Bo Bunny papers for this layout.  I thought they fit the theme so well.  I started with a piece of brown cardstock.  Then, selected three pieces of patterned paper and cut them at 4x10, 4.5x9, 4.25x7.5.  I also mounted my 5x7 picture onto a mat of orange cardstock. Then layered them all in the center of the brown cardstock.  I then had just a few embellishments to the layout. 

For the calendar layout, I started with the same measurements as January's LO. Then I hand sketched in the numbers and some of the holidays for September.

Now, I'm not going to lie this takes a long time, but the outcome is well worth it.  I selected three main colors of glitter.  One for holidays, then two for alternating the days of the week and dates.  I started with the dates and did a couple at a time by using my trusty Elmer's glue to trace over my pencil lines, then adding the glitter to the top.  The special days for the month, I used were Labor Day, Patriot Day, International Day of Peace and the First Day of Autumn.  I just slowly worked my way through each week.  I decided I like the calendar without the lines, so I erased all my pencil lines in between the lines.

Thank you for stopping by!  Next hop on over to Christel at Scrappin' Sista. for some more great inspiration.

Just in case you get lost along the way, here is the list of all the stops.

1.   January and April: Celeste at Touched by a Butterfly

2.   January and September:  Jessica at  Overjoyed Scrapper  That is me!

3.   February: Christel at Scrappin' Sista 

4.   February and March: Karelj at One By One The Flamingos Are Stealing My Sanity  

5.   March and July: Diane at Crafting This Moment 

6.   April: Bonnie at A Scrap Above 

7.   May: Michelle at Peanut Butter and Jelly Designs 

8.   May:  Natalie at Timeless Legacy Designs 

9.   June: Lisa at Lisa's Paper Butterflies 

10. June: Jamie at Glitter, Paper, Stamps, Oh My!   

11. July: Summer and Jennifer at Cricut Diaries 

12. August: Denise at Starlight Scrapper 

13. August: Gina at Gina Thornton Stamping 

14. September: Deb at If It's Groovy

15. October: Rebecca at Creations with Becka 

16. October: Lora at Notes From The Scrapbook Lady  

17. November: Belinda at Queen Bee's Musings 

18. November and December : Col at Col's Creative Corner

19. December: Deb at Tidbit's Place