There is a super article in December's Craft Stamper mag by Kate Crane on making an art journal calendar month by month for a whole year. So I have made my pages for January 2011 - roughly based on the article but using my own colours and stamps. I decided to use the Craft Stamper mag's free stamps as my main embellishment and theme each month. So I thought of making coffee coloured pages (browns, creams, and maybe some gold) to feature the coffee cup this month, but the only acrylic paints I had at home were baby pink (Anita's from a scrapbooking class ages ago) and pearlescent white (which I bought to cover chipboard shapes - it gives a lovely sheen and can then be coloured softly with Distress Inks) so I painted my pages yesterday in pink and white, stippled on some Distress Inks (Tea Dye and Victorian Velvet) stamped cups, dots, and words. There is a nice shine in places when viewed under electric light. Then I stamped the title onto spotted paper (had to use black ink as the Tea Dye didn't show up well enough) and cut out some cups and the squares. All this lovely paper is from a scrapbooking kit I bought in Create and Craft TV's sale a year or so ago - they are all in lovely pink, beige, red, orange and green colours, which fit beautifully together and suit the pink painted pages. Then I stuck it all together - spot the two (not quite deliberate) mistakes ! I wanted something green in the lower left hand corner and stuck the green dotty cup there, then when I numbered the squares I had not put one on for Monday 31st - so I had to put another green square on there (moving the green cup) - now there's too much green on the lower left hand page ! And I stuck the cups on the right hand page before I stuck on the squares - so one square covers the edge of the distressed stripy cup - pity ! I love this paper, it is already distressed and suits my style wonderfully. The distressed look is so forgiving - where I handled some of the bits with pink inky fingers, it doesn't really matter ! After I had stuck everything on, I had a blank gap on the right hand side , so I stamped some numbers on there. I had hoped to have space to display a matching ATC, but there isn't room on the page.
I'm really looking forward to making February - the timepiece stamp will be fabulous for a calender - not sure whether too make it in blue (loved Kate's January colourway) or all sophisticated in black, white and silver, or what ?
Anyway, I do hope I can keep this calendar up and I will use Craft Stamper free stamps every month - but I reserve to myself the right to use a stamp from 2009 or 2010 if I don't like this year's stamp any month. Most of them are fab and I usually make some ATCs each month using the stamp (they are a great size for ATCs), but occasionally they are just not my style. I did not use the December 2010 stamp with the elf on a postage stamp - too cutsie for me !
