Creative Thursday & Expanding My Reach!

This is Day 6 of my 9-day vacation stretch. It's going WAY too fast!

I just thought I'd share a little bit of my activities the last two days.

I have been spending a lot of time the last couple of days finishing a Christmas gift project for some family members. I know it's not the time of year people think of Christmas shopping, or in my case, Christmas creating. But I received and email reminder on Monday from Shutterfly that June 2nd was the deadline to receive 75 FREE photo prints. So I was trying to think how I could use them. I try (these days) not to print photos just to be printing them. I have tons to scrapbook and they are safely stored digitally until I'm ready to print them.

So then I found this FREEBIE download and the light bulb went off! I'd make Flip Calendars with family photos and print multiple copies (since I could get 75 free, right?) and make these calendars as Christmas gifts!

The pre-made calendar templates were perfect and would make it easy to plug in my family's photos and be done! WRONG! I completed this one of my mother with the June template...

Then realized... these are 2010 Calendars! Grrr... Hubby got a chuckle out of my frustration. But I did realize that this creation was perfect as my June Desktop Wallpaper! So I will still use all of these templates for that. I'll have a calendar on my desktop each month now as well as family members highlighted for a whole month.

But I still had to come up with something printable that I could complete, get uploaded and ordered by midnight last night for my free 75 photos. SO... I decided I'd create my own 2011 Calendar Template with one of my digi kits I already had. I had two days to get them done. I worked and worked. I completed Jan - July on Tuesday. Then sit down last night to complete the rest of the month. I got them finished, uploaded to Shutterfly and my order placed at 11:57pm.... three minutes to spare! I can't wait to get them!

I'll show you a sample of what I made but Shhhh, don't tell my family. There are 6 females (mother, myself, 2 sisters, 2 sisters-in-law) 6 X 12 months = 72 prints. I only had to pay shipping and spent less than $5.00 for these. The calendar frames can be found at Ikea online (since I don't have one near me) for about $10. So for each gift I'll spend around $11 or $12 per person for a great gift they can use all year long! I know mine will sit on my desk at work. =)

This is July 2011 and my son, Adam. I chose photos for anyone with a birthday or anniversary in the month. Since Adam is the only celebration in July I used more than one photo to showcase him. =)

March has 3 celebrations, ALL on the same day! My niece, Samantha has a birthday and the other two photos are my brothers and their wives, who all celebrate their wedding anniversary on the 21st.

And it doesn't matter if you have a month without a special family celebration.

February is the only month of the year we don't have birthdays and anniversaries in.

I just chose a quote suitable for Valentines Day from Quote Garden. (You can find a quote for ANYTHING there!) This turned out a good as any other month with the digi papers/elements in the photo space.

So just a sampling of the project. And as you can tell, each month carries the same basic layout and colors. I only changed the name of each month, inserted new photos and then moved around the days of the month to the appropriate position, which turned out to be the most time consuming part. Just a hint though. - Be sure you have ALL the photos you plan to use in a folder and ready to plug in. I thought I had them all and was scrambling through my external hard drive LATE last night to find the last 2 or 3 I needed. =)

On a side note... I corresponded with Kristy @ Learning As They Grow a bit yesterday via email. Okay so I kinda stalked her getting info and having her help me test out some things with a NEW My Lifesong Twitter page (the background I made with a photoshop template turned out great huh?) I have a lot of my favorite bloggers following my personal twitter page but I'd love to have you click on my new blog's link and follow me there... pretty please! And I'll be sure to follow you back if I'm not already. =) Kristy really had to help me (a LOT - TY Kristy!) working on that Facebook page. I wanted to have it completely independent and in no way connected to my personal Facebook page. I still haven't figured out that part. I had to connect the Blog's page to my profile, then my full name was showing up on there. So if anyone has any ideas on separating the two completely, I'd love to hear from you! I did think I'd delete the page and could maybe create a whole new profile with a different email address but I'd still have to give a first and last name that way too. Any other ideas out there?