Free October Calendar for Your iWhatever or Other Device

Happy October!

I had a whole little story about how Kelly Rippa almost used MY word, "iWhatever," the other day, but I decided to do a little research first and found that I am not the coiner-of-that-phrase. Nope. I'm at least five years late. Now I'm really bummed. 

Oh, well.... I can say that I appear to be the only maker of " iWhatever calendars" on the internet! I'm the only one that calls them that, at the very least, because this site is the only thing that came up when I Googled it!  

Here is your new calendar for October. It doesn't have nearly as many layers of embellishments as most of my others have had, but I didn't want to make it all foo-fooey. I wanted it to have a Halloween-ish feel to it. I made it on Coolibah, my favorite iWhatever app known to humanity, but I just couldn't get it to look right. I decided that the colors weren't working, so I used a photo editing app called Snapseed to change it to black and white. Perfect! It's a little shorter from side to side than the others have been, so don't panic if it doesn't fit the screen the same way. You can adjust the size when you save it to your lockscreen.

For those of you who have never done this before, you can put this calendar on your phone, iPod, iPad, or even your laptop or desktop computer by following the directions you will find here. 

If you would like to make your own calendar using Coolibah, I give directions in this post. Feel free to use either of these calendars. Just save them to your Photo Album and use them like any other picture. 

I hope one of these tickles your fancy!

 AHS MARCHING BAND UPDATE

The band has marched in two competitions so far. We drove about 3 hours Saturday to compete at Sullivan, which is near St. Louis. The color guard (the girls I work with who spin the flags and rifles) didn't score very well last weekend in Webb City, but I am VERY happy to say they won Outstanding Color Guard in Sullivan. The Houn Dawgs also won Outstanding Percussion and First Place in our class. Only one band outscored us all day, and it was in the bigger class. Two down, three to go! (That means only fifteen more days of waking up before dawn! Woohoo!)

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!  

Manilla Envelope Mini Album

Today I have another mini album to share with you.... 

I made it to hold before and after photos of a renovation and I used some materials and techniques that I haven't used before. I started with six 6x9 inch manilla envelopes. 

One envelope is full size. It will be the back cover and the flap will wrap around and fold over the front. (pictured on the right) I cut off the flap and removed the clasp from three envelopes. (bottom left) Those will be pages that have a pocket at the center of the book. The last two envelopes are cut down to 6.5 inches long. (top left) Use any combination you like. I would have made all my pages have the little pockets, but I had already cut two envelopes down to 6.5 inches and didn't want them to go to waste! The open end of the envelope serves as a pocket already, so the little pocket is just a bonus. 

The base for my tags or inserts is a Diet Coke carton. I cut pieces to the size I wanted and ran them through the Cuttlebug in embossing folders. Two have woodgrain, one is a checkerboard, and one looks like cracked glass. Then I dry brushed some black acrylic paint on the solid brown side to help bring out the embossing (ink would work, too) and I painted around the edges of the backside to cover the logos.

 I cut a few mats from kraft paper and a few more from some yellow paper that is almost the same color as the envelopes. I also added some dictionary pages just for fun. Here's what I did to them....

I tore a page out of an old dictionary that I bought just for this kind of thing. Then I picked out a couple of colors of acrylic paint that I thought would look nice in this book--a dark blue and sandstone. I think the tool that I show in the pictures is a thing that's used to spread frosting. Henceforth it shall be called the "scraper." I saw this done with a credit card, but this scraper was handy, so.... I ran a line of the sandstone paint along the edge of the scraper and added a couple dots of the blue. Then I pressed the edge of the scraper to the edge of a page and pulled it across, leaving streaks of paint behind. 

Each page came out different. This is a whole lot more enjoyable than the other kind of scraping paint! It was so much fun that I even tore out another page for the back cover and the flap. This is how the mats turned out:

And this is how they look when adhered to the tags:

Here you can see the back cover and the front flap. Next time I scrape paint this way I want to stamp an image on top of the paint and see where that goes!

I cut and embossed the frame and attached a piece of twine
under it. The twine wraps around a ginormous eyelet on
the flap to hold it closed.

I left a half inch for the binding when I cut the envelopes to 6.5 inches. So I covered all the envelopes with 6x6 inch squares of patterned paper, leaving that extra half inch uncovered. Then I used my Cinch to punch holes for the binding wires in the bottom edge of the envelopes.  

 I'll probably include some kraft paper

mats when I send this off. Some of  the background paper is pretty busy.

Pretty long post, right? I glad you stayed with me! If I have another post like this one I'll try to split it up into a couple of installments. I feel a little loopy tonight, so I hope it wasn't too hard to follow. The band had its first competition Saturday and I'm still trying to catch up. Those things are EXHAUSTING!

Go dig out something you haven't used for a long time and see what you can do with it. My "something" was acrylic paint. I use it quite often, but never for cards or scrapbooks. I think it worked perfectly for this book!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!

Bridging the Gap in My Own Little Way

This is a six inch mini album I made for my sister-in-law, Amy, to give to a friend who was recently married. I was telling another friend about it and she would like one, too, to send to a pair of newlyweds she knows. It seems like I'm doing a lot of black and white or black and cream for weddings. "Back in The Day" we would never have used black in our wedding colors! Of course we would never have worn a black formal to prom, either. Or anything the least bit low-cut. Or short. Or sequinned. If it wasn't pastel with ruffles, lace, and poufy sleeves it just wasn't prom or wedding-worthy. 

I think the papers and embellishments I used for this album do a fine job of bridging the generation gap. We have pearls, prisms, and filigree on the dangle, with roses and a delicate pearlized doily on the cover. I used some very dilute walnut ink to tone down the "whiteness" of the doily a bit, then I sprayed it with some Smooch Spritz to give it a little sheen.  I wish you could see how pretty it is, but it just doesn't show up well in a picture. The black frame is cut with Nesties Labels 1 and embossed with the Perfect Polka Dots embossing folder. Until the bride and groom insert their own photo, the frame holds an image stamped with SU! Elements of Style and highlighted with a Gelly Roll Stardust pen. 

Can you make out the scallop stitching around the edges of the pages? Those aren't just for looks. I layer the papers I want for each page and stitch around the edge to hold them together. I leave the top open on some of the pages to create a pocket for tags that hold more photos or journaling. 

The ribbons at the top are tied to the tags. Each tag has a variety of embossing, stamped images, and inked edges. Even without any photos, they are quite interesting!

I think you can see on the picture below where there is a slim little place punched out at the top of each pocket. An oval or circle punch works great for this. (For baby girl books I like to use a scallop circle.)

The last two pages I have to show are a little different. The diagonal pocket worked perfectly with the checked paper...

This pocket was made with a Grand Nestabilities oval, but you could trace and cut around a plate to get the same effect. 

There are a few more pages--twelve in all, but I won't bog down your computer with loading more images.

Remember the Paisley Tables? Doc sold them! For TWICE AS MUCH as he was asking before I painted them!
More updates--my color guard girls are doing great! The first competition is next Saturday. I also need to brag on the football team. The Houn Dawgs are state ranked! WooHoo!One poll has them at #7 and another at #5. Go Dawgs!

I'm putting together the projects for stamp club tomorrow and I'm still not exactly sure what we're doing, so I better get back to it!

Thanks for stopping by! See you next time!