Crop Chocolate Designs: Green Calendar

Hello everyone. I am not sure how many of you shop at www.CropChocolate.com but there are a lot of goodies to be found and at rock bottom prices. You have the option of holding your items in your 'la carte' until you reach a total that will allow free shipping.

There was a recent call for customers to create some designs using their products. I was among many of those selected. Although my pics have been up at CropChoc I never got around to posting them to my blog. I created several projects and a few of which can only be seen here.

My favorite was the calendar I created using a photo taken of my son at a studio. After distributing as many as I could, I had to figure out what to do with the rest. This is a great use for them. Here is how it all came together.

White Sakura gel pen used to create faux stitching around the 8 x 12 inch base. I simply drew these freehand and tried to make sure that the corners were even.

Next, the green base was stamped in various muted ink colors with one of the flower stamps used to create the embellishments on the final piece. Since I was covering the center of the base, I used that area to test my flowers.  

Photo was matted to black paper with a faux stitching using a Sakura white gel pen. Then that was matted to a patterned piece leaving a two inch border at the bottom to add some journaling or a quote.

Stamped Fancy Pants flower and heat set using the green cardstock. I used a swirl stamp in the background to give the flowers some variety and a bit of texture.

This Making Memories 5th Ave patterened piece was cut to 4x12, inked around the edges in red and adhered on top of the flowers and the faux stitching.

This is a better view of all the elements together.  A hand-made calendar has been added along with the matted and layered photo with a quote at the bottom. Two Basic Grey Granola chipboard embellishments have been added also.

Primary brads were used as the center for the flower images and mounted on to foam dots for dimension. You don't see the faux stitching here, because this was taken during the planning process.

The flirty letters were used and over-inked with black ink to bring down the color.

Flowers have been added to the scroll swirls and around the photo.

 I really like this idea of using those leftover photos to make calendars. Once the month has passed the calendar can be adhered to a full 12x12 piece of cardstock and placed into an album. The extra four inches at the bottom can contain numbered items that happened during the month which will correspond to the day. You get double duty for your scrapping.

Working on these projects really got me to think in different ways. This one certainly gives you bang for your buck.

It would not be mine if it were not inked in some way. I just can't resist. Why the red you ask? It is my son's favorite color, so I had to try and incorporate a bit.

Keep crafting and inking in the name of love.
Until then.