A Little Showing Off

The last project we did with my Stamp Club was a calendar for 2008. We each took a month and we had only one rule: The page must be 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, or half a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 card stock. Other than that, we were free to do whatever we wanted to! Being realistic people - i.e., we have lives - we gave ourselves several months to complete our pages, and we got together at the end of December for the assembly process and to feed our faces.

We had most of the people in attendance, and all of the completed pages. Not all of the pages, but all of the completed pages. We were short one of the pages. And of the actual completed pages, two people did half a sheet of card stock in the wrong direction ... one of them was the right width but the wrong length (we are still trying to figure out how she did that), and one of them was exactly half, just the wrong way. We did some minor surgery on the too-narrow-and-too-long one and it was fine. One of them needed more time for its transformation, and since we were short one of the months anyway, we opted to collect our stacks, including the lovely cover and the chipboard backing provided by our gracious hostess, our coil for binding, placed the unbound items in our protective bags, and commenced to feed.

Let me tell you, these ladies can COOK! Not only are the calendar pages awesome, they are not too bad in the food arena, either. Everything was YUMMY!

At my workshop this past weekend we received the rest of the pages, so I assembled my calendar so I can take it to work and admire our handiwork every day! Since I only did one page, that's all I feel right showing you, so here we go...presenting .... March 2008:

Why yes, it is a little different than your average calendar page. The problem started when I was given no guidance in the form of rules, so once I was sure I'd cut the card stock in the right direction, I went to town.

March is a sweet month because so much happens in March! You have your obvious holidays - Easter, First Day of Spring, the Ides of March, St. Patty's Day, etc. How boring. So I searched for less-obvious days to celebrate...we'll get to those in a minute.

First to decide on a layout. I tried a tri-fold calendar that would give me a full 11 inches of width to let me decorate each important day, but that died on the vine. There was just not enough room on the page. We needed to leave the top 1 1/2" of the page unembellished so it would fit into the Rubicoil, so this only left 7" to work with, seriously limiting my decorating area. Then I decided to just do an image for each holiday along with the date, and not make it part of the actual calendar. After my mockup was done, I liked it, but *I* knew what the images were meant to represent...it would not be so obvious to others.

Some important dates I felt compelled to include: March 3rd is "What if Cats and Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs? Day", and since we all have furry pets it was a must to be included! The 12th is "National Workplace Napping Day" - gotta include that one!

What to do, what to do. Ah-ha! A cheat sheet! I placed a pocket of DS paper on the back of my page and made up a Cheat Sheet on the 'puter with all the dates listed, plus a few more, like "Swallows Return To San Juan Capistrano Day" and "As Young As You Feel Day". Not only was this Cheat Sheet a very clever way around my little predicament, it also decorated the back of my page! A bonus!

Some of the features on my page I am particulary proud of are the following: (1) the cat and dog are fluffy - they have flocking on them; (2) the spring (first day of Spring, get it?) is made by wrapping some wire around a wooden skewer - an idea from one of my fellow conspiring stampers when I whined about not being able to find any I liked at the hardware store; and (3) I did not include my birthday. Okay, I noted the day after my birthday, just so they'd know they missed it, but I certainly do not expect any flood of cards or anything like that ........

So here is how I did the cheat sheet:

And here is the Cheat Sheet up close:

I managed, via poor photography, to hack off the holiday listed for the 31st. It is "National She's Funny That Way Day".

The project was a success, and we are all very pleased with ourselves. We have our annual meeting in February to decide what we plan to do for this year, and I am sure it will include another Chunky Project of some kind. This is just such a great way to get a little bit of art from everyone!

Well, tomorrow evening I have a workshop, so no playing tonight - gotta keep the stations clear of clutter, and once I start on something, well, it's just best not to start at all. Then Wednesday I pick the winner of my Blog Candy! YAY!

Gotta go do some laundry so I can go to work tomorrow. :-)