{this post was originally written for write.click.scrapbook}

So far, in this Calendar Week, we have been focusing on calendars in their most traditional use, and as standalone projects. Now, let’s look at how to incorporate calendars in mini albums and other projects to keep track of time.

The reason I include calendars in these projects is to add a time reference, but I always like to make the calendars part an integral of the design. I usually accomplish this by customizing colors and themes.

Mini Albums

For mini albums, especially ones that are dedicated to specific periods in time such as December Daily, I love to include a calendar. Here are two examples for my two past DD albums.

In 2011, I included a printed digital calendar element to the inside cover of my album. That year, my album had a red+aqua color scheme, so this calendar was a perfect match.

Last year, I layered the calendar on top of a digital paper, and used it on the first page of my album.

Pocket Page Scrapbooking

I am a huge fan of Becky Higgins’s Project Life concept to document our everyday life. I make weekly 2-page spreads, and each week I like to include a way to keep track of time. Calendars are a great way to accomplish this purpose, and also add visual interest.

For this card, I used Amy Tangerine’s customizable calendar stamp by American Crafts. Since this particular week was spanning two months, I thought this ampersand card would go be a good complement.

Here is another example of how I included the calendar stamp in another pocket. I added some arrows to highlight the particular week.

Finally, here’s a card created digitally, and printed out. I used the calendar cards by creashens. I love how the different elements on these cards come in separate files, because it allowed me to change the colors and rearrange the big numbers as needed to spell out the week number.

Do you include calendar elements in your mini albums? I’d love to see your examples, please share them in the comments!

{this post was originally written for write.click.scrapbook}

Welcome to Day 3 of Calendar Week! Today I will show you a couple of ways to put together a desktop calendar.

Desktop Calendars

Due to the smaller format, I find that desktop calendars are quicker to put together than wall calendars. I also love that it’s easy for me to put them together at home. I have designed a few over the years, and in most cases I used pictures from scenes around our home.

CD Case Calendar

Here are a couple of pages from a CD case I made a few years ago.

I decorated the background with digital scrapbooking papers by Jenn Barrette, and also printed out a few digital embellishments and adhered them with pop dots to add some dimension.

I repurposed an old CD case to use as the holder for the calendar. I printed these at home, on my old but trusted printer (a multi-function printer and scanner by HP), on matte paper (my favorite for hybrid projects).

4″x6″ calendar

I recently put together a 2014 desk calendar using templates by Paislee Press. This calendar was so quick to make! The templates are in .PSD files, so you need Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to use them. All I had to do was pick my photos, and print them out. The photo selection was by far the longest part of this process.

I shrunk the templates slightly in order to fit four pages on a letter-sized sheet. I love the clean design that showcases my photos.

I printed them at home on matte paper, and trimmed them.

For the theme of the calendar, I chose scenes from around our home. These pictures make me so happy – I love our home and it will be really nice to have this calendar on my desk at work. This is how I will be displaying my new desk calendar.

Once the month is passed, the calendar page can transition to my Project Life album.. which brings us to tomorrow’s theme – using calendars in mini album and pocket page scrapping!