Handmade Family Calendars

Last year for Christmas we made our families these lovely calendars from Wal-Mart. They cost about 15$ each and to us that is big bucks, especially when you make a ton of them. Once I got the hang of them they were simple to make and you can make them super personalized, which we loved. But this year we started making them for even more family members and then the price went up to 20$. 20 big ones. 20 dolla dolla bills ya'll. 20 dinero. cha-ching. You get the picture. So we had to find a more budget friendly calendar. We got so many compliments from our calendar last year and we loved looking at all the pictures ourselves, so we definitely wanted to stick with photos and we really loved the larger format to be able to write in our daily activities to keep track of our hectic life. So we found an easy and very cost-effective way to make our own and as with all things handmade, we like it even better!  

This is my favorite page!

Our price went from 20$ down to 3$! Cha-ching in my pocket! Virtually our only cost was printing the pictures. We already had scrapbook paper, book rings, glue, embellishments, etc. We printed the calendars offline and we were using a 'friends' laminating machine, but we made a lot of calendars and I got a little addicted to laminating things, so I found this bad boy on Amazon for 20$ and bought the laminating pouches for 12$.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012UEXTQ/ref=oh_o00_s02_i00_details

So to make 3 calendars we spent 38$, including the machine, which is still may cheaper than the 60$ we would have spent through a photo site.

This is the original calendar printed from Wal-mart.

As we were playing with them we realized that the photos that overlapped made the pages more sturdy and using 2 sided tape rather than glue made the pages less wrinkly. You can embellish them more or leave them simple, we loved the combination and had so much fun making them! All we did was layer the calendar pages and the next months picture page together in the laminating pouches, laminate, hole punch and put book rings through and hang!

Here is our version!

Here are a few of the pages I made:

Our friends always love seeing who made the calendar cut :)

The book rings. You can use any size depending on how you like the pages to hang.

This was a very quick project, but I have a feeling that if I wasnt in such a hurry I could have spent weeks working on it!

And last, in honor of our wedding anniversary, my favorite shots from the wedding. They just never get old!