It's TIME!

Yes, it's time for me to be DONE with my family calendars!

But, unfortunately, I'm not.

Here's where I am in the whole project.

ONE calendar is done to the point where I can actually start adding the dates for each month and any special occasion information.

Last night I was finally able to get all the photos and journaling done for each of the 12 pages for four calendars - that's one for my Bro & SIL, one each for two nephews and families, and finally, one for myself!

Tonight I attached journaled pages to the prototype calendar.

I started thinking last night about the months - generally I stamp the names individually, but I'm so far behind at finishing these things (I'm still HOPING to have them ready to mail by the end of March!), that I finally decided I'd try to do the month and year info using My Digital Studio (MDS).

And I did!

Here are photos of the pages I created in MDS

















I have the MDS download for making a calendar, so I just used the months info as it was already set up.

I adjusted the length of some of the names of the months, so that they'd fit better on the "Days to Remember" 6x6 calendar (Item 104144 $9.95).

I printed them out on Whisper White CS and spent the evening cutting and pasting these to the actual pages of the prototype calendar.

What I like about this calendar is that I can start it any month of the year that I want to! And I ALWAYS need to start it later than January!

If you noticed, this year's will start in April... Sigh...

Oh, and I DIDN'T have to cut the year information - I used a PUNCH! WOO HOO!

Lookie


Yep - the Tiny Tags punch! (Item 117190 $10.95 - page 202 in the big catalog)

It was PERFECT!

I'll just fake the hole in the tag with my wonderful Sharpie Ultra-Fine RETRACTABLE pen. Like this


and we're good to go!

Of course, now that the photos are actually attached to the calendar, it looks pretty bare! Need the dates, of course, but before they go in the mail, I'm sure each of the calendar pages themselves will also have the occasions we need to celebrate, as well as some stamped images of some sort!



Can't have all that white space, you know! If I go ahead and send them this way, it'll drive me nuts! So, guess they probably won't make it out of here before the end of March - although that's STILL my goal!

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Hey, did you remember that this is the last week for getting your FREE STAMPS from Sale-A-Bration (SAB)?

Well, it is. March 31st is the last day this year anyone can enter a $50 and receive a free item from the SAB mini-catalog. That's Wednesday, for those of you (like me!) who have to have your computer to tell you what day of the week it is!

So, hurry up! Dig out the Occasions mini or the big catalog and do some shopping - take advantage of Stampin' Up! - they'll LOVE IT! And so will I!

Thanks for stopping by - come back soon!

A Sample from My Digital Studio

I've been showing you some items I've created using My Digital Studio (MDS). I showed pages out of two differently created books.

The first one I did from templates provided - but the templates only had text and photos boxes preloaded. I added cardstocks, background papers, embellishments and stamps, along with my photos.

The second one I created used the Simply Scrappin' elements that are included. For these pages, not only were the text and photo boxes already placed, but the pages were all decorated as well. I used the Sunny Days kit for the Tale of Two Kittens.

It was VERY easy! I think the hardest part was trying to decide what to journal that would explain all the photos on that particular page.

About a month ago, I noticed that Patty Bennett had posted a couple of pages from a book she was creating that would show what elements are contained within My Digital Studio.

At the time I thought it was a clever idea, but it wasn't something I had time to do.

But these past couple of days, I did take the time to do something similar, and I'm glad I did, because I have a much better appreciation for this product as a result.

There are a TON of emblishments included - which I hadn't noticed until I took the time to copy/paste them one at a time into my new sampler book for MDS.

I'll share some of the pages now, and the rest at another time. The book ended up being 36 pages long - and I didn't include the stamp images that are available in the 40 or so stamps sets included!

I haven't decided whether to have this hard bound, or print it off here at home and put the pages into a binder. (or both!).

Below are some of the pages I've created.



















































Hope you enjoyed the sneak peek inside the MDS software! Maybe now you'll have to ask Santa to bring it to you for Christmas!

Have Santa call or email me to order this for you!

Happy stampin'