Hi guys, today I’m going to start a new fun series that will continue this entire year!
We moved into our new house in May last year. It’s not a big house but it has enough rooms that my stepson could have his own place (which is important for a teenager) and my boyfriend wanted to use the attic for his sports and his computer and camera stuff. So that left one unused room and I made that my craft room.
For some time now I had the idea to make a birthday calender to hang in my new craft room so that I know when everybody’s birthday’s are and also when the cards I want to make for these people need to be ready, but also to have a pretty art-piece for my craft room walls (there even was a hook in the wall already, left by the old owner, that suited this goal perfectly). I’m planning to use my most favourite stamps on this calender but we will see how it turns out throughout the year.
So, every month this whole year I will decorate a different page on my birthday calender and share that with you. This month of course I did January. But before I could start I had to find a birthday calender that suited my needs. I remembered that I had a Pergamano calender laying around somewhere that I wanted to make really badly when I bought it, but I never seem to get to it and Pergamano is fun but also a whole lot of work, like days........ to finish one project! I don’t have that much time! So I will use that calender for this project: mine has a different colour scheme on every page and these are the colours I’ll try to incorporate further in that month’s page.
If you want to do something like this you can, of course, use every birthday calender you have that you want to alter. Your working space on the calender needs to be big enough for you to make what you want on there! And I wouldn’t recommend making your pages too thick or you’ll probably end up with a 5 centimetre thick calender! I think that even with the 3 millimetre thickness I created today for this month I might get into trouble, but we will see in the end!
For this month I started out with a coloured image I made in December for this particular project but didn’t got around to finish, making it into a page, back then. That’s why I don’t remember exactly what colour Zig markers I used, so sorry for that. I do remember that I wanted the coloured piece to match the calender page which primary colours are pink-purple and blue-gray.
The stamp I used is called “Holly”, from Whimsy Stamps, which I stamped on Strathmore Bristol Smooth Surface paper with Versafine “Onyx Black” ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder (like I always do). I just love these Whimsy fairy’s, they are so darn cute!
Like I said I don’t remember all the colour-names that I used but I definitely used the Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers in "Light Violet", "Purple", "Blue Gray" and "Pale Dawn Gray" on the clothes and the wings and "Light Blue" around the image. With a small brush I also applied a thin layer of “Diamond” Stickles on the wings, it looks awesome, you should really try this if you have never done that before! Really, no kidding, it makes a big difference! I use “Diamond” for warm coloured wings and Stickles “Star Dust” for cool coloured wings.
Then for the background: I die cut this fairy out with one of the Crea-Nest-Lies XXL stitched square dies and my Big Shot to start with and edged this piece with Distress ink “Tumbled Glass” because it matches the Light Blue Zig marker I used around the fairy.
Next it was time to design the piece for the calender and incorporate the fairy in there. First of all I felt that the tiny bit of green from the leaves had to come back in the background just a little to make it look more balanced. So I dug through my card stock to find a matching green piece that wasn’t used during Christmas time, which was a little hard, but I found some left overs that were the right size and colour.
Then I went through my stash to find pinkish-purple card stock and found out that I didn’t have to many of that, and that’s how I landed in my patterned paper stash, I don’t use patterned paper that much (I like to make my own to match the card design for a particular card) but I do have some and there was one piece of paper that had fine white lines and about the right colour: I cut it by hand to make it the exact size (for my project: 16 x 20 centimetre) that I wanted for my biggest background and to give it a bit more contrast I edged with Distress ink in the colour “Seedless Preserves”. Next I found a patterned paper that was smaller but in the same colour family and also with fine white lines that seemed to fit the theme I had going, so I used that.
As with the green piece I wanted to have the blue-gray base colour from the page to come back in the design: unfortunately I don’t have any blue-gray card stock (really, when I told my boyfriend that I didn’t have enough card stock to find something in the right colour he just laughed and wouldn’t believe me, but you guys understand for sure, don’t you?) so I used a pale light blue piece and edged with Distress ink in the colour “Weathered Wood”.
Now that I had the right colours laying out for me, I felt that there was something missing, it looked to clinical and straight all together. So, I went through my dies and found this great flower die from Marianne Design (LR0250) which you first cut with your Big Shot and then emboss with the Impressions Pad an the Silicone Rubber (I used dark coloured craft card stock that I did have!!! and edged a little with Distress ink “Walnut Stain” to give it more dimension). I used 1 millimetre thick foam tape between the green and the blue-gray layers and liquid glue on the rest and put everything together.
To finish this first page for my birthday calender I used some pinkish-purple ribbon (did I mention that I’m in my ribbon-fase?) from my stash and some sequins from Cartwright’s Sequins (I used the colours "Metallic Razzleberry", "Satin Gold" and "Satin White" in different sizes) and all together it turned this page into a beautiful first piece for my calender project. Love it!
Are you considering or doing a project similar like this? I would love to hear about it! Because we give so many things we make away it’s fun to also make something for ourselves to decorate our craft room/space with. Every time I look at this calender I feel inspired to create something beautiful!
#handmadecards #makeyourlifecolourful #WhimsyStampsHolly #zigcleancolorrealbrushmarker #DiamondStickles #Cartwrightssequins
