2010 Cupcake Calendar: January

I was originally thinking about doing a "Happy New Year" thing for this page, and came up with this incidentally, when I saw Shae's snow suit hanging in the foyer. We didn't have very many snowy days last winter, so I'm glad I managed to get a couple of pictures when I had the chance.

2010 Crazymaking Calendars: Nevembuary

Oh dear sweet merciful crap ... next time I decide to do a project like this, remind me to start in like July, okay? Because let me tell you, these calendar projects? I love working on them, but they are making me crazy. Knowing I have virtually impossible deadlines (like, I really need to have these done by like December 15th, so I can get them to the printer's and get them back in time, which means that I have to anticipate Christmas pages without actually having any Christmas pictures!) is not making this easier. Why do I do these things to myself?

Anyway ... since last week I've gotten the following pages done:

Revamp of the previous October "Cousins Calendar" page. At my sister's suggestion, I re-oriented this to horizontal, plus added an extra picture. (I think all the "Cousins Calendar" pages are going to end up with four pictures each -- it's an even number, good for balance.) Not sure why the right-hand margin is off-center. Tried to fix it, blew up the GIMP, leaving it as is.

"Cousins Calendar" November page. This is a lot more simple and muted than the other pages I already have done, but this is one of my favorites so far (out of either projects). And not just because this layout took maybe an hour, tops, to put together (and most of that was spent trying to pick out the background paper). Children + outside + leaves + natural light = much win and awsum. Little kids always look so happy playing in the leaves, don't they? (More pictures of Joey here -- and believe me when I tell you that I desperately wanted to try to work that second picture into this collage.)

March page of the Cupcake Calendar. This page was inspired by both one of my earliest scrapbooking projects from July and (sort of) the page I did for this calendar for August. I really needed to get a picture of Gladys Leibowitz into this calendar somehow. And even so, I completely cheated: these pictures are really from April. (They're actually from later than the pictures that I used for April.) Not that anyone really cares but me, but whatever.

So, at this point: 8 pages of the Cupcake Calendar down, 4 to go (Jan., Feb., Nov., Dec.) and 4 pages of the Cousins Calendar down, 8 to go (Jan. - Jul., Dec.). Plus, I am still working on my other sister's website redesign, which is supposed to be finished by her birthday on December 11th, which ... okay, listen, I just need to lie down for a little while, okay?

Wish me luck! It's going to be a crazy next couple of weeks.

2010 Cousins Calendar: August (& September Edits)

In reverse order.

The only thing I did here was change the picture of Joey in the lower right-hand corner. Bad call on my part in the original -- this picture is much better.

This one turned out pretty surprisingly. I spent about an hour the other night going through Jaime's blog trying to find pictures of Joey that I could use for the calendar, and at the same time I found myself thinking about these pictures of Shae and wondering how I could work them into the Cupcake Calendar. That this concept did not originally occur to me is kind of embarrassing.

Also: holy tomato, was this a difficult spread to put together! All the pieces came from different sources. I got REALLY lucky with the background because none of the football-themed papers I had looked right. Even though it looks perfect here (according to me, anyway), this green background was actually from an Easter kit, I think. The word art and team logos are all custom and I did those myself from Internet images.

Teaching yourself the lasso tool, FTW!

2010 Joezie (Shaey?) Calendar: September

To be perfectly technical, these pictures aren't all from September, but who really cares? They're close enough. (The pictures of Joey are from October, when we went out for the christening.) Certainly they're cute enough.

This layout ended up being both simple and complicated at the same time -- I still need to refer to a tutorial whenever I use photomasks, so when I do that particular effect, it takes me a while. And this may come as a shock (NOT!) but I agonized over the background paper -- I really think that needed to be "right" to work well.

But the rest kind of came together on its own, once I located the three different kinds of bubbles in four different sizes by three different designers. The placement was the hardest part. But I really didn't fart around with much here, because ... this just works, I think.

Put on your fanciest and most couture Nina Garcia caps and tell me: do you like it?

2010 ... Other Calendar: October

This is probably only a first draft. Although I do like the way this turned out so far. The (??) calendar is going to be a little trickier because I need to make sure that both kids are equally represented. I suspect right off the bat that this project (whatever it will end up being called) will be a little more "homey" and a bit less "fancy" than the other calendar -- or, what I guess I mean is, this will look more like a scrapbook and less like an art project. Or something.

The big question is: what in the heck are we going to call this thing? "Cupcake Calendar" was a given because before the adoption, Shae's "nom de blog" was Cupcake. We still call her that sometimes, and it's kind of her trademark. But what about this special joint presentation? I still haven't worked that part out. If I end up using your suggestion, maybe you'll get one of these bad boys as a special prize, assuming you aren't already on the list to get one anyway.

2010 Cupcake Calendar: April

G and I debated over whether to make this a birthday page or an Easter page, since they're both only three days apart next year, but in the end I decided to go with the birthday because I'm going to have to do another Easter page for a different calendar.

And make a note of this, because it's probably the closest I will come to making a "princess page" for quite some time. Or ever, if I can help it.

Edits: May 2010 and October 2010

So: here are the edited versions of the May and October pages. Not much different, but yet I am happy with these changes. You?