Blank 2012 Calendar

The girls have Custom-Made 2012 Calendars underway for a handful of people this year. 
These are formatted to fit on standard 8-1/2" x 11" paper in landscape mode.

I punched holes and connected the pages with binder rings, but hanging single sheets is an option, too.  If you don't have any binder rings on hand you could use ribbon or yarn.  You could also slip the page (or pages) into sheet protectors and use them that way.

Two holes at the top for connecting the pages, and one at the bottom (not shown) for hanging the calendar

We have used an additional  sheet for the cover and bound all of the pages together along the top edge. The kids have an entire blank sheet per month to decorate.  They have a lot of fun decorating the special days of the year:  birthdays,  holidays,  the last day of school...

Here's a  LINK to the scribd document, ready to embellish with drawing, stamping, or collage.  The sky's the limit. Use good-quality cardstock for best results.

Artist at Work

Elves at Work

I had lots of help with this year's Christmas cards (thank you, loving helpers!!!). Here they are, busily cutting and gluing pieces together. Somehow, we always end up working on cards up to the very last moment. Believe it or not, these cards were begun in January, yet here we were mere days away from the last mailing opportunity, assembling like mad-people.

We made "many".

Here's a closeup. The cookie stamps are from Too Much Fun except the snowmen, which were created from photos of actual cookies. The pop-out snowman was colored with PrismaColors, and the rest were done via PhotoShop. Pistachio cardstock came from The Paper Cut.

M E R R Y C H R I S T M A S!!!

Advent Calendar

Here's a neat idea for a do-it-yourself Advent calendar. One of these years I'm going to do this.

Not this year, I fear.

Skinny Saturday

Need an excuse to stamp? How about Skinny Saturday!
We were given an open theme this week.

Laurel's:
Mine:

Holly was busy with Father's Day projects, so didn't participate this time.

More Dolls

Here's my favorite:

The dolls and their wardrobes have made it to PDF format at long last. Many thanks to the very knowledgeable people on the Elements User's Forum. They are so generous in sharing their skills with newbies like me!

If you want to share the dolls, please link your friends to this post. You may print the items for your own personal, non-commercial use.

You'll find all six of the paper dolls, ready to print, color and cut out here. There are two PDF files for each doll; one for the doll and stand, and one for the clothing. For printing the dolls, I suggest using heavy-weight cardstock (available at any office supply store). For the clothing, text weight is best. Once you're in scribd, click on the drop-down box labeled "iPaper" to print

A couple of notes: The taller dolls will benefit greatly from a narrow strip of cardstock taped or glued to their backs as shown on Julie below. Double-sided tape works great for this.


Also, I recommend cutting notches, rather than slits to attach the doll to the stand. I cut notches on both the doll base and the stand. We could discuss interference fits and geometric tolerances, but really who cares? Just cut some notches like the one circled below:


Here's a picture of the dolls we painted for our homeschool friends. We used brush markers on some; watercolors on others.

Now the song, "We are the World" is playing in my head.

The artist, dolls packed, and ready to go to a tea party!

Paper Doll: Renee

Meet Renee.

You may download or print several PDFs here of the various dolls and their wardrobes.

Paper Dolls

We're getting ready for a tea party with some homeschooling friends on Sunday. Here's a sneak peak at one of the afternoon's planned activities.

Laurel drew all of the dolls, complete with five or six pieces of clothing each. More to come on this later!

3-D Paper Eggs

Most of these were made by my 12yo. She's into all things crafty. Each one of these eggs took about 2 hours to make, but they're so cool! And really, they'll last forever so what's a couple of hours of work compared to forever?


To start, you buy a stamping kit from Some Assembly Required. This company sells the coolest stuff around. You'll be amazed. Anyway, once you have the kit (the eggs shown were made with the Medium Egg Stamp Set) start stamping away. We used 80 lb cardstock and chose an ink color that matched as closely as possible.


The instructions that come with the kit identify each stamp by a letter-number code. I used a sharpie marker to write each stamp's code directly onto the rubber part of each stamp. I marked each stamped image with the corresponding code, too (in pencil). It made assembly so much easier!


Next, the cutting. I won't lie. There's a lot of cutting. I recommend using very sharp pointy scissors and a blade of some sort, too. I use a box-cutter.


Once everything is cut out, the fun really begins. Assembly. This is the stage where you will be so very thankful that you marked each paper piece with its corresponding code. The first two pieces will go together with no problem.



The next twelve will be more difficult.



But the end result will be so worth it!

Look--the last piece acts as a slide-up door. You can add a very small something to the inside of your egg! We haven't tried that yet. The coolest part? The eggs fold flat (see the almost flat yellow one in the background?).



If you're opposed to all of that cutting, SAR offers pre-cut egg kits in several shades of cardstock. They also carry metal dies (instead of rubber stamps) for many of their kits, for use in personal die cutters such as Zip'eMate or Sizzix machines. With any of the options though, the assembly is all up to you.

Photo credits: Laurel (9). Artwork and hand model: Holly (12).