well here it goes, my first caffeine-induced creative post. well really, its my first creative post period. i should probably begin with a little background on myself. or rather, a couple "heads-up"s about what some might find annoying. for starters, i refuse to capitalize what needs capitalizing. at this stage in my life, most of my peers know that a sentence starts with a capital letter...what the reasoning is behind this, im not sure, perhaps ill wikipedia it later but regardless, i simply refuse. i like the look of lowercase letters. theres something freeing about it. also...i am lazy and do not use apostrophes. i promise i know the difference between its and it's. i even set up my auto-correct to fix almost all contractions so i dont have to use the apostrophe key. im that girl. on occassion, i spell terribly. if you see pictures of my hands, i apologize, my nails are never nice. i do not get mani-pedis. id rather spend my money on cardstock:) i overuse smiley faces, btw. i tend to make up my own words. and i will do my best to keep my language pg, though it may travel into the pg-13 realm. it does this of its own accord, i am not responsible.
great! now that ive gotten my business off my chest, let me start in on what i did today! this is my first attempt at tutorials. i have an awesome camera that i have no idea how to use, so if my pictures are shoddy, poorly lit and slightly blurry i apologize. i will try not to put crappy pictures in my blog. i also promise to find ways to show my fancypants camera who is the boss. or who is trying to be the boss:)
i dont have a lot of pictures for this particular post, but there isnt a whole lot of technical whatnot for the project so it should be ok. i took a trip to goodwill this morning and picked out a larger than average size frame. it was a total of 1.59! woohoo! i love being cheap. i wanted something big, more around the size of an actual calendar page but they didnt have anything and im an impatient girl who doesnt understand what come back next week means. so my frame is 8x14.
your frame dimensions are going to dictate the length and width of your papers. i picked about 5 different patterned cardstocks to make my wanttobesquares/rectangles for the calendar portion. I chose a coordinating pattern for the background, cutting it 8x12 to leave a 2inch allowance for any notes that need to be made for the month. the 8x2 section was also a coordinating color, which i chose as a lighter solid to make sure my notes showed up. my rectangles are a little busy but i loved the paper so i couldnt tell myself no.
so for my calendar, because i was working with an 8x12 area, and i wanted space at the top to write the month and put days of the week letters, i cut my rectangles into 1.2x1.7in pieces. i know that was a ridiculous run-on sentence. lets just go with it. i made 6 rows of 7 because i didnt want to wind up splitting any of the days like they do on normal calendars. if i had done 5 rows of 7, my rectangles(which i am henceforth calling boxes) would have been bigger. you do what you like. thats the best part about crafting. there really arent rules or anything. well. unless youre sewing i guess. but even then i dont follow them.
anywho. i arranged my 42 boxes so that i didnt have any repeating colors next to eachother (oh, i enjoy redundancy as well!). i made sure to leave room at the top and a slight border around the sides (or atleast i thought i did). i only wanted the border so that it would be aesthetically pleasing. sort of. you have the freedom to do what you want! isnt it awesome? ;) once you are satisfied with the arrangement, stick those suckers down. i used double sided tape. i didnt want the mess of glue or modpodge...im still in the fightthebubbles stage of modpodging so i wasnt ready for that battle today. now you have 42 (or 35) beautiful boxes all lined up and maybe cut the same length/width. mine were a little uneven but im going to say it adds charm.
usually when you buy a new frame, it comes with a paper insert of some happy person/couples picture. when you buy one from goodwill theyre usually empty. but guess what? mine had one! so i had this extra piece of almost useless paper that was the exact size of the frame glass. so i used it to tape my 8x12 background and 8x2 sidenote paper to. i recommend finding/making one solid piece of paper that is the size of the frame to adhere both of your papers too. you probably dont need to do this, but youll want to make sure they line up ok before you put the frame back together and hang it up. just a suggestion!
after i had everything secured in place, i rummaged through my stash of transfer letters and came up with a few for the days of the week and to spell out "notes". i wanted to use black but apparently the black letters had been previously plundered and all i had were letters like d and k and z. so i had to use white...oh well.
so that i had a place to write the numbers for each day, i raided the bottom of our three hole punch. there were tons of miniature white dots! i squeezed out some clear glue and used a toothpick to dab glue on each dot then put one in the corner of each square. it was tedious, but i wanted it to go from looking like a bunch of boxes to a blank calendar.
for some reason, as if it wasnt already self explanatory, i took a picture:)
heres what it looks like with some of the dots added
i was being totally lazy and did not decorate my frame or re-paint it. i know it looks rough...but. im ok with that. if you get hit by a creative wave to decorate yours, go for it!
and here it is in use! my dry erase markers dont work worth poo, but itll function for now!
hope you enjoy your dry-erase calendars!
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