New Beginnings – in a lot of ways!

I’m quite nervous (but excited at the same time) as I have spent this weekend completing my first commission for Papercraft Essentials. I sat at my craft desk with stage fright for quite a while before I actually started to make anything. The deadline isn’t actually until 25th January, but regular readers will know that Baby Bump is due to arrive on 20th January (OMG less than 2 weeks to go!) so I wanted to get the commission made and in the post.

So after lot’s and lot’s of crafting I thought I would share with you another part of my winning entry for Papercraft Essentials Papercrafter of the Year 2012 and this one was the non card project. I made a Calendar using digis from Pink Gem Designs to represent the four seasons:

The base of the calendar is a plywood blank that I picked up for less than 75p in Hobbycraft and I painted it with blue acrylic paint and then distressed it firstly with white acrylic paint and then sanding the edges and applying some Faded Jeans Distress Ink to highlight the edges.

Next were the images and as I really love the Chloe images I’ve used Butterfly Chloe for Spring, Fairy Chloe for Summer, Chloe in the Rain for Autumn and Winter Chloe for Winter. The images have all been coloured using ProMarkers. It doesn’t show well in the pictures but I have varied the colours I’ve used as background/sky for each image to represent the seasons as well.

I’ve used patterned papers from Cosmo Crickets 6x6 Material Girl paper pad, textured card from Core’dinations, and then various dies, punches, flowers, ribbon, pearls, gems, flowers and glitter glue to embellish.

The 2013 banner was stamped and cut by hand, the banner stamp was a Craft Stamper freebie a few months back and the number stamps have been in my stash for years and I think were from Hobbycraft. I have attached them to the calendar using Velcro dots so that I can change them and update the calendar for next year.

Unfortunately when I finished and photographed the calendar to post into the competition I was staying at my parents and they had no where I could hang it so the only picture I have showing it in full with the calendar pages is the one from the magazine and as I don’t have a scanner the picture I took isn’t that clear.

The calendar pages are printed on smooth white card, 2 months per page and are mounted onto red card and attached to tiny cup hooks on the bottom of the calendar using book rings, this way I’ll be able to replace them for next year.

I hope that my calendar for the New Year counts as a new beginning as I would like to enter it for the ‘New Beginnings’ challenge at A Gem of a Challenge.

• Craft My Life – Anything but a Card
• Lexis Creations – Anything Goes
• Make it Monday – Anything Goes
• Whoopsi Daisy Challenge – Die cuts and punches
• Papertake Weekly – Anything Goes
• Passion for ProMarkers – New Beginnings (New Calendar/New Year)
• Tuesday Throwdown – Bright and Happy New Year
• Divas by Design – Anything Goes
• Flutterby Wednesdays – In with the New (New Calendar/New Year)
• Simon Says Stamp – New Something (New Calendar/New Year)
• Crafty Ribbons – New Beginnings (New Calendar/New Year)
• Simply Create – Linky Party #16
• Stampin with the Dragon  - Anything Goes
• Card Makin Mamas – Anything Goes
• Totally Papercrafts – Something New (New Calendar/New Year)
• Pause Dream Enjoy – Use Ribbon
• Stampin for the Weekend – Anything Goes
• My Time to Craft – All about the New (New Calendar/New Year)
• Totally Gorjuss – Anything Goes with Ribbon
• Dream Valley – Anything Goes
• By the Cute and Girly – Cute and Girly
• Crafty Calendar Challenge – New (New Calendar/New Year)
• Sparkles Forum Challenge - Anything Goes
• My Mums Craft Shop – Anything Goes

Thanks for stopping by
Lisa