"my precious" (week 2)

remember, we're in the midst of a pretty fab two-week challenge at SOS; for "my precious" we're searching our stashes for something very special we've been hanging on to... maybe even, dare we say, hoarding??! we invite you to find something of that nature in your own collection, but then to actually *USE* said sacred papercraftyness in a project of your choice. this week, my "precious" item is item is once removed, so to speak. for christmas, i made a weekly planner for my mom, using trimmed down pages from the beautiful marjolein bastin calendars she had collected and saved over the years. over the summer, she did a big clear-out and decided it was "silly" to keep old calendars; so she gave them to me to use in collages or other artwork. which i did, though possibly not in the way she imagined, lol! :)

when my mom first gave me these, i knew immediately that i wanted to make them into something for her. i figured it ought to be USEFUL, to take away the "silliness" factor. i thought about a garden journal or a scrapbook, or notecards or... well, i thought about a lot of different ideas, but settled pretty quickly on a weekly planner. 

the thing about these is that you need quite a bit of art. i mean, there are 52 weeks in a year, obviously. but if the year doesn't happen to start or end on a sunday, that means you have 54 calendar pages, each of which, ideally, would face some "content". not to mention covers, endpapers, any filler bits you want to include. sometimes this is a big stumbling block, but in this case it was perfect because it meant i could use LOTS of the old calendar pages. 

i use an ancient copy of broderbund's printshop when i make planners because it has the perfect template. it means i'm kind of locked in to their size and shape... 6.5x8.25" pages... but i'm ok with that, and since most of the old calendar art was 12x12" it meant that i could fill the pages with borderless art, which is my favorite way to go.

i printed out the entire year's worth of pages on inexpensive, lightweight patterned papers trimmed to 8.5x11", my printer's favorite size. afterwards, i trimmed those down to about 7x8" and ran them through my xyron machine to coat the backs of them evenly with dry adhesive. then i stuck them to the back of my chosen art pages. only THEN did i trim the "composite" pages... (which have art on one side and a current 2016 week on the other) ...to the finished page size. this last bit is important, because if you leave a xyroned page exactly the same size as when it went through the machine, there is always a tiny little bit of sticky adhesive film on the edge. always. yuck. so i like to run them through just slightly big, and adjust at the end.

after all the pages were assembled, i used my bind-it-all to punch the holes and add the spiral binding. i'm fortunate enough to have a husband who's willing to assist in these projects, which is awesome because i honestly don't know how a person with less than three hands could manage all the steps. 

i hope you'll hop over to SOS to see the design team's gorgeous work, and start planning your own bid for papercrafting world domination! ♥♥♥