calendar challenge

A month or so back Kate was inspired by Jill over at the Third Age Musing blog to create a journal calendar page for December '09 and to fill it in daily [see above photo].  As it went so well during the busiest month of her year, she's challenged us to do it for the year.   You can sign up here.

The work is really only in the preparation.  And as the choice of design is up to you, it's down to how much time you have.  Otherwise the daily commitment is only 5 minutes!!!  The challenge is to fill in a little tiny square each day with a word, a picture or a sentence picking out something from your day. 

Kate used pages in her A4 moleskine, adding another challenge for herself by working larger than she's used to.  I decided I wanted to make a book which will then become a diary of the year.  I'll be REALLY chuffed if I manage to write in it everyday, I've never managed to keep a diary beyond the first week or two of January ;)

I started with a large sheet of Bockingford watercolour paper on the kitchen floor and had a wonderful time adding colour to it using my adirondack paint dabbers.

When my husband came into our small kitchen to get his breakfast, he was very sweet and really didn't mind manoeuvring around me, but did fall about laughing at me and insisted on taking a photo...which I'm not sharing!!

 

Once I'd painted both sides and they were dry, I tore the paper into eight pieces, and sewed down the middle of seven of them to create a book.

 

I had a very relaxing time adding tabs to each page which I'll put the calendar months on. 

Then promptly forgot I was taking step by step photos!!  I've stamped the first open spread page using adirondack paint dabbers and stamps by Tim Holtz, Wendy Vecchi and Lost Coast Designs, highlighted the letters saying 'january' using a very soft graphite pencel, and added printed words and 1" squares cut from a sheet of white card stained with coffee.

 

It's still waiting for '2010' to be added, and 'january' to be added to the tag, but otherwise I'm pretty much set!  The book needs a cover, and I'm going to prep february's page next, but it's good to go for Friday :)

Thanks Kate, this is going to be great fun!!!  And hello to all my new followers!  And the uplifting comments people have left as part of the Stamp Man's first blog hop.  If you've not joined in yet, there's still time!  You've got until midnight GMT Sunday 3rd January 2010.  My part of the blog hop is the post below this one.  Happy Hopping!