Happy New Year!

 Oh my goodness, it’s the new year and I hope you all had enjoyable days during the holidays!  Recently, I was invited to join in on a challenge I hadn’t heard of before – making an art journal calendar for the year.  Wait, don’t run off before I tell you about it!  You may want to try something like this.

Basically, you create your own calendar in an artsy way, and then just jot down something each day!  That’s about all the journaling some of us may do!  It’s even more than some of us do now!  Some people create theirs with 1.5 inch squares, but this one was made with 2″ squares since the pages were large and could accomodate that size.  Plus, I’m not sure I can get anything written in something smaller than that!

Since many of you scrapbook, I wanted to give you an idea of how to do this, scrapbook style!

Here’s a basic run down on how my January 2013 was created:

• I did this as a double page spread, using 12×12 inch paper.
• I first used several die cut snowflakes and and inked over the background using 3 colors of ink.
• The bottom was masked off with torn paper, moving it around to ink over the edges and to make my snow drifts.
• Snowflakes were then stamped.
• Squares were cut from a decorative paper and adhered.
• Tiny strips of paper were cut and the days of week hand written and adhered.
• Journal blocks were outlined in black to give a little more definition.
• Die cut letters were made for “January” and “2013”
• White pen was used to make some icicles on the edges of some the journal squares.
• White die cut snowflakes were added in a few places.
• Glitter glue was added to snowflakes, snow drifts and a lot of other places for added sparkle!

I just finished mine today, but I know a couple of things I’ll write for yesterday.  Don’t be put off from doing this, just because you didn’t get it ready by January 1st!  There are plenty of days to come, and it could be a fun thing to have and look back at.  Just think, 12 layouts to sum up a year!  What fun to look back on.

If you end up making something, please come over and share it with us over at the Artful Adventures FaceBook Group!