August Calendar

Today's month is August, and for August I am making a butterfly.  I started off by cutting out the body of the butterfly, and then gluing that down.

Next, I drew the top half of the wings, and then I divided that half up into smaller sections.  I cut out each section on a different piece of patterned paper.  I glued the pieces down as I went, so that I didn't mix any of them up. 

Then I did the same thing for the bottom section of wing.

After I was finished gluing down all the pieces of the wings, I went over the edges with diamond glitter glue.  Now the butterfly is complete.

To finish the page I wrote out 'August' in gold glitter glue.  

Happy DIYing!

July

Today for my July calendar I am making a cocoon.  I first drew it out on a solid sheet of paper, and then cut it out and used this as a template.  I picked out 9 different pieces of patterned paper scraps.  I picked papers that either had mostly brown or orange in them.    

I traced each cocoon piece onto a different sheet of paper, and cut them out as I went.  Then I glued them to the scrapbook paper for July.  

Next I drew out July in foam, and cut it out and glued it down to the page.  I also glued down all the days on the corresponding sheet.  

Happy DIYing!

June

For the summer months, June, July , and August I decided I wanted to have the three stages of a butterfly.  Thus, for June I started off with a caterpillar.  I don't know about you, but when I think about caterpillars I think about The Hungry Caterpillar.  

I started with his face.  I cut out a red circle in foam, and glued that down on the right side of the paper.  Then I punched two holes out of green foam, and used those to draw two slightly larger holes out of yellow.  I glued those down on top of each other for the eyes on the red circle.  Then I drew a black dot for the nose with a black fine point sharpie.  For the final part of the head, I drew two antenna out of grey watercolor paper, cut them out, and glued them at the top of the head.  

Then I started making the body.  I used three different colors of tissue paper, two light greens and a yellow.  I tore the paper in strips with the length of the paper.  Then I twisted a strip in a spiral motion, starting in the center.  If one strip left me with too small of a circle I would just glue the end down with a tiny dot, and then put another tiny dot of glue and start with another strip.  When the spiral of tissue paper was as large as the head I would turn it over and apply glue to the back.  Then smooshed the circle down butting it up against the previous circle.  

When I was finished with the body, I cut four half circles out of the red foam for the feet.  Then I glued two down together near the end of the caterpillar, and two together near the front.  Then I drew the legs with a black sharpie.  

Finally, I cut 'June' out of an old sample of wallpaper from the 70s.  I was thrilled about this match, the colors work perfectly together.  

Hope you all enjoyed!  Happy DIYing!  

May Flowers

Today I thumbed through one of my favorite books The Ultimate Card Maker, and got some great ideas.  I associate May with flowers, which makes sense as the saying goes "April showers bring May flowers".  I combined a couple ideas in the book to make my flowers.  

First I cut the ribbons that would be the stems.  I cut three stems each around four and an half inches long, I made the middle stem slightly shorter.  Then I folded a length of two inch ribbon in half, and taped that down where I wanted the stem for the flower to go.  The doubled over ribbon will be the leafs.  Make sure to use tape that is thin enough to be covered by your stem ribbon, you can always cut wider tape down.  

Then glue the stem ribbon down on top of the leaf.  Use only a small dab at each end and the middle of the ribbon.  

Then I cut out three cup sized circles out in three different colors.  On the back of each circle I drew similar petal patterns and cut them out.  Then I glued each flower down.

For the center flower I used four strands of ribbon in between the two paper flowers.  I glued the center of the ribbon down in the center of the flower, nice side down.  

I then used a flower punch to be the center of my flowers. Then I hot glued each ribbon end into the center, on top of each other.  Once all the ribbons were folded in I hot glued the flower punch over top of everything, and glued the other two punches down on the outside flowers. 

 

  I spelled out 'May' with the center of the flowers after everything was in place.  It would have been better if I had done that before hand, but it still looks awesome!  

Happy DIYing!

April

It is the third day of the year, and we are moving on with the fourth month of the year, April.  I started today's project off knowing I wanted to create a nest with a lot of texture, but that is all I knew for certain.  The rest came to me as I worked on the nest.  

I started off by gluing down two pieces of handmade grey paper flat to the center of the scrapbook page.  These two pieces will act as the bottom of the nest, you'll want them to be kind of oval shaped.  Don't worry about the edges because they will be covered up.  Next I tore up a bunch of small squares of paper.  

Then I would  bunch and mush the small pieces of paper making them extra crinkled.  Once I was satisfied with their look I would find the flat side and dab some glue on the paper.  

Then I would press the piece on the edge of the nest.  

Filling in pieces as I go, and molding them into place.  

I used one 8" x 10" sheet of grey handmade paper, and I also used a little bit of light orange handmade paper.  

Once I was finished with the nest I made five eggs out of foam.  Then I wrote 'a', 'p', 'r', 'i', 'l' on them in glue and sprinkled with pink glitter.  Then I glued the eggs down in the nest spelling out 'April'.  

Hope ya'll enjoyed!  Happy DIYing!

March Calendar

Here are some images for February.  I glued the heart I cut out yesterday down, and I wrote out 'February' in red yarn.  I first wrote 'February' in pencil, and then went over it with glue as I glued the red yarn to it.  

Today's main focus was March.  I decided I wanted to have a mamma elephant holding a bunch of balloons that spelled out 'March', and a baby elephant following behind.  I started with the elephants.  I drew them on two separate sheets of paper in a solid green color.  Then I cut them both out.  I figured out the best position for the elephants on the scrapbook page, and glued them down.  I left the trunk for the mom elephant loose though.  

Then I cut out a bunch of balloons, definitely more than I needed.  I used a couple different patterned sheets of paper, and some solid sheets too.  I then would position a balloon, and cut a piece of string, so it would run from under the balloon to the mamma elephant's trunk.  Once everything was in place I would glue the balloon over top the string, and then tuck the other end of the string through the mamma elephant's trunk.  

Once I was satisfied with the number of balloons I took 5 solid colored balloons, and on each one wrote 'm', 'a', 'r', 'c', 'h'.  Then I glued them down like the other balloons, and making them spell out 'March'. 

Of course I ended with gluing down the squares for all of the days, like I did for the previous two months.  

This month is definitely the best so far!  Hope ya'll enjoyed!  Happy DIYing!

Redoing Yesterday's Project

I was really unhappy with the outcome of yesterday's project, so I  spent a lot of time re-doing January.  I also planned out what sheets would be for each month.  Hopefully with that being organized the next few days projects will go smoothly.   

First I made a paper snowflake out of white paper, and a 4 inch square frame out of blue foam.  I glued the foam frame in the center of the scrapbook sheet, then I glued the paper snowflake over the frame.  I'm never all that pleased with my freehand, so I cheated and printed out 'January' in a fitting font.  When printing be sure the letters are the correct size and spacing.  Then cut out the inside circles for the As, and then cut out the whole word.  Then I held the stencil in place on the scrapbook paper and painted the letters white.  Afterwards I went over the letters with silver glitter. 

I wasn't able to glue down the heart I cut out for February, but here are some photos of what I got done for this month.  I will complete it tomorrow, when January is completely dry.  

This is a stencil from a great book called The Complete Photo Guide to Paper Crafts.  This is what I'm going to use for my February page.  

This is what it looks like cut out and flattened. 

Happy DIYing!