Year at a Glance – 2015 Floral Calendar

Posted on November 24, 2014 by Kristie Sloan

Welcome to Make It Monday blog hop! If you’ve come Gina’s site at GinaZee.com, you are in the right place!

Now it’s my turn to show you an idea! If you’ve been following along lately, you know that today is the day that the Creative Christmas Bundle goes on sale! 15 Crafters/Designers – 15 products – 1 low price – for 1 week only!

My contribution to this special bundle is an online Art Journaling Basics class! You can find out about it here, but don’t order from that page, because for a few dollars more you can get the entire Creative Christmas Bundle!

Today, I want to show you a project using Karen Fitting’s contribution to the bundle. Karen takes photos of flowers through the whole year, and then finds her favorites to create a calendar. She has put one each month of the year on a separate photo and save them all as 4×6″ .jpg images. That way, we can use them however we want to!

I decided that I would like to make an at-a-glance type calendar in a 12″x12″ size. I created a digital template with twelve 3″x4″ segments. Since the the original images are in a 4″x6″ size they don’t size down without losing part of the image, or changing the proportions. I chose to size them down as much as possible and then just leaving off a bit of the image. That way the photo and calendar remain proportional.

Images from Karen Fitting’s contribution to the Creative Christmas bundle.

After I got all the images on, I linked them all together and sized the entire block of images to about an 11″x11″ square, and changed my background to black.

I added the “2015” text so I’d know the calendar year. Pretty smart, right? Save it all in a single image and it’s ready to print!

Right now, during the month of November, you can print two 12″x12″ layouts from Close to My Heart’s Studio J, for $5.00. This may be a good time to get some of your photos onto pages, or just print your calendar. You could print the calendar on both sides of the double layout, and you’ll have a calendar to give and one to keep!

Watch how to create the calendar page in Studio J.

CTMH #Z2016

CTMH Item #Z2015

Now, hurry over and check out how Beth Soler from Scrapping Wonders is using the Bundle to prep for her December Daily album! If you’re not sure what that even is, it’s an album to capture all the memories of December in one great place, urging you to capture bits of each and every day in December!

Don’t miss out on the Creative Christmas Bundle!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures!

Creative Christmas Bundle

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Kristie Sloan

Projects and ideas from 15 crafters and designers.

I am so excited to tell you about a creative bundle of goodness, which I’ve been working on behind the scenes, in preparation for the big day it is released for sale, November 24th. It is a collaborative effort of 15 crafters and designers, which can give you a jump start with ideas and how to instructions on many great holiday projects! You’ll want to be sure and go check out the information about the designers and sign up to get updates.

Here’s a peek at some of what you’ll find in the Creative Christmas Bundle:

2015 printable photo calendar
Advent calendar, printable supplies, tutorials, and suggested daily activities
December Daily scrapbook sketches and more
Printable pocket page cards
Cut files for Silhouette and Cricut
Gift ideas and tutorials
Christmas-themed cross-stitch patterns
Printable Christmas cards
Tutorials for making photo gifts
Tutorials on using apps to create and print photos and photo gifts
Art journaling (for any time of year)
Upcycling for a green Christmas
Plus bonuses galore

You won’t want to miss out on this bargain, if you are even the least bit prone to creativity! Valued at over $250 it will be on sale for just $29.99! You can meet the designers and sign up to get the email for the initial release here. The sale runs from November 24 – December 1.

I am bringing my Art Journaling Basics class online, and the first release will be part of the Creative Christmas Bundle!

In this class you will:

Learn what art journaling is. Discover ways you may decide to use it.

Receive tips on what to use for a journal. Don’t get lost in the sea of choices, you can make informed decisions.

Learn how to make your own journal by recycling a book. It’s easy to go green!

Learn about basic supplies and adhesives. Don’t spend money on supplies you don’t need to get started. Find out what you may already have on hand that will work.

Receive product recommendations. Get tips you can use to make your selections and save time and money.

Learn how to create five fast and easy ways to make backgrounds. Get started right away, so you aren’t staring at a blank page wondering what to do next.

Receive a list of page prompts and learn how using prompts can spark your creativity. Never feel ‘stuck’ or lacking ideas!

Receive printable images and quotes to get started without delay! Great to take shopping!

Bonus 1: You will also receive the original Artful Adventures Art Journaling Basics eBook for free! This ebook in .pdf format also contains links to the videos and the printables, giving you multiple options to access the class information.

Bonus 2: A private Facebook Group to connect with others and share your projects without the judgement of family and friends who have no idea what you’re doing! We’ll have our own fun!

What you get:

7 Lessons

5 Videos

6 Pages of Printable Images (91 single images)

2 Page of Quotes and online quote resources

Samples with basic description of steps to complete.

List of page prompts

Printable list of basic Product Recommendations

This class is a steal at $20, but it will be part of the Creative Christmas Bundle. So you can have access to the online class and do it whenever you want to, and get all the other goodies in the bundle as well! All content is available upon payment of your Creative Christmas Bundle. You’ll receive a code for your class registration, and there is no expiration date to access your content. Hurry over now to sign up and get updates!

Cheers to YOUR Artful Adventures,

May Scrapbook Style Art Journal Calendar

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Kristie Sloan

May Art Journal Calendar

An art journal calendar is a fun way to just make a few note about your daily life, and this style is great if you are just dipping your toes into the world of daily journaling. A great feature of creating your own pages is the fact that you can start anytime. If you didn’t start in January, no problem! You don’t have a pre-made book with dates that are just empty. (If you did use a pre-dated item, you could always just fill in the previous pages with other stuff — notes, ideas, sketches — it’s all good!)

It’s been kind of hard to get into a spring mindset, with all the snow that kept showing up in April. I felt like where I went, there it snowed! This page kind of represents a spring morning, the dawn of a new season! Even with the threat of snow as I was making this page, and my daughter coming in to tell me that she was standing outside and watched a light rain turn into snowflakes, I was still determined to make a spring page for May.

Here’s the way the page came together:

Large letters were used to create a mask for the word May.
I used pastels to create the background.
Then I blended and played with the color to make my version of early morning.
I decided I didn’t want to cover the background I had so much fun creating, so I used a piece of lightweight cardboard from the back of a tablet of paper and made a flower template with my Big Shot and a flower die.
Tracing around the flower die, I left a few running off the edge of the paper, and made some close enough together to make them look like there are some behind others.
Day numbers were added at the edges of the flower shapes.
Some doodles were added here and there.
A border was doodled around the entire border.

That was it! I think as the month goes on, I will be able to add more doodling and other embellishments as it becomes clear which days have more written in them. We’ll see how that goes.

I hope you will make a page and come over and share a picture of it over on our Facebook Artful Adventures Group page!

Here are some of my other examples of art journal calendars.

Have you made any art journal calendars, either in more of an art journal style or this scrapbook style? Please share your ideas with us!

Heart Punch Shamrocks on March Art Journal Calendar

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Kristie Sloan

I always love it when I can show you something and get a project done at the same time! Today, I’ve got yet another way to use a heart punch or die cut. We are almost to March this year, and St. Patrick’s Day brings Irish inspired design to many things during the month of March.

These were made from vellum so that they did not completely cover up the background layers.

For this March art journal calendar scrapbook page:

Printed some vintage St. Patrick’s greetings which Joanna Grant had shared on her site, Joanna Banana Design Originals, and cut them apart.

Used a green piece of 12×12″ card stock for the foundation piece.
Die cut “March” from a printed paper, and inked the edges of the letters
Arranged the vintage greetings and adhered them.

Artful-Adventures-Kristie-Sloan-March-Project-Layout

Toned down the greetings with a bit of white craft ink.

Artful-Adventures-Kristie-Sloan-March-Project-Inking

Punched hearts from heavy vellum card stock
Inked the edges of the hearts
Arrange the hearts into shamrocks
Adhered just the points with a bit of glitter glue
Topped off the center of each shamrock with a bit of Crystal Effects, to make sure they adhered securely.

Artful-Adventures-Kristie-Sloan-Heart-Punch-Shamrocks

Drew stems on the shamrocks with a marker.
Numbered the petals of the shamrocks to be used as a tiny journal spot for each day.

Don’t forget to join us over at the Artful Adventures Facebook Group and share your completed items! There will be “lucky” prizes drawn in March for those who have uploaded something they have created. You never know when those drawings will be held!

Heart Punch Art Journal Calendar

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Kristie Sloan

Keeping an open mind to what you can use a punch for, made quick work in creating my February Art Journal calendar in a bit of both scrapbook and art journal style. Making things more artful isn’t hard!

Here is how this went together:

I found a piece of red with white dot paper for the background.
Used coordinating paper and cut letter out.
Found the letters not only coordinated, they just blended in and faded away.
Outlined the die cut letters with marker to make them stand out! Much better! Adhered the February title.
Hand cut 3 hearts in different shapes from paper that looked like book text. I didn’t want to use book text, because I wanted to make sure the paper was archival safe for this project.

Added definition to the text hearts by using pastels on the edges with both a gray and red color. (Use what you have on hand for this step, inking will be just fine – just rub it on.) Note that this was purposefully not done neatly.

More definition was added by just loosely outlining around and partially on the hearts, with a thin black marker
Punched smaller hearts out of a white vellum card stock, and arranged them on page.
Attached the vellum hearts in the corners with a glue dot. Normally you want to be careful what you use to adhere vellum, because it can show through. I used that to my advantage, and used it as the tiny spot to write my numbers for the days of the month. Also, I decided that I would attach the hearts only in a single spot, in case I want to write under the heart. That way, I have several options for journalling and can actually double my writing space if I need to!

I outlined a couple of special days during the month, which are a holiday and a family birthday!

I went in a put a dot of Crystal Effects on the upper left edge of each punched heart to give it a little more stability. Those dots weren’t dry when I took the photos, so they really don’t show up. It will be a nice little shiny accent for each day!
Done! Although I realized I forgot to put the year. However, don’t you think if it is sandwiched in with a bunch of other months from the same year it will be okay? I may add the year, I may not. Oh, maybe I’ll just use a date stamp!

If you make a calendar page, please come share it with us over at our Artful Adventures Facebook Group!

Here are some supplies you can pick up over at my Stampin’Up! store.

Heart Punch – #119883

First Edition Specialty Paper – #121878 (Also used on this project)

White Vellum Cardstock – #101856

Glue Dots – #103683

Stamp Sponges – #101610

Ink Pads

Basic Gray – #126979

Real Red – #126949

White uni-ball Signo Gell Pen – #105021

Crystal Effects – #101055

Typeset Alphabet Bigz Die Set – #127553

Big Shot Die-Cutting Machine – #113439

Artful Adventures

Ideas for scrapbooking, art journaling, mixed media, card making and stamping projects.

Tag Archives: calendar