craft : 2009 calendar

Hi Everyone -

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I was busy finishing up my first calendar. For 2008 we purchased 5 calendars: 2 letterpress, 1 wall, 1 small, and 1 for my agenda. I realize now that it was quite costly, so for 2009 I wanted to reduce our purchases by at least 1 and decided to make a small calendar myself. I've wanted to do so for a while, but didn't have any art I could imagine looking at all year long. But, the photos of some of our collections seemed good enough for a first go round.



The Adobe programs we have are out of date for our new computer, so I created the calendar in Word from scatch. I tried to find a template online, but they were too large. In school, I created a website informational architecture with complicated schematics in Word (crazy!), so a calendar shouldn't be too hard.



I used 8.5" x 11" photo paper for the calendar and linen for the cover. Ultimately, each month will be cut into a 4" x 5" rectangle. I started with a 2-column/2-row table on each page for a total of 3 pages. Then, I created a template using a smaller table for each month and automatic numbering in each cell containing a date. Special holidays are in red. Finally, I copied and pasted that table into each cell of the 2-column/2-row table, changed the image for each month, and adjusted the dates, as necessary. (Does this make any sense?)



Once printed, cutting the calendar is the hardest thing for me to do - ugh! I use a rotary cutter and a ruler in order to get straight, flat edges instead of a paper cutter. The little paper button was made using the Martha Stewart Crafts paper punch purchased at Michael's (don't see it listed on either site) and is tied with waxed twine. I'd like to give a couple of these as gifts and included an envelope with an image printed on the back. The thing I like most about this calendar is that it can be changed whenever I want to, which could be pretty soon. I've already purchased Natasha's sweet calendar, so that's 2, so far.

xo, Cindy