Studio 5: Re-purposing Calendars

Oh, it was great to be back on Studio 5 again!  It's been too long!  Had lots of fun preparing these segments and hope you enjoy them.  Please watch the video, but read the article too, as I hardly touched on all my ideas.  As always too little time!  (you can see and read the 2nd part of my visit to Studio 5: Puff Pastry here)



Most of us have a wall calendar on our wall and go to great lengths (at least I do) to pick the perfect one. The one that matches my tastes and my home decor. It always hurts me to throw it away come January 1st, so I usually hang on to them for a few years. Not anymore! I am hooked! Not only will I repurpose the calendars I've used, but now I'm on the hunt for old calendars on clearance.

Probably the easiest way to re-purpose those beautiful prints and photographs is to simply frame them.

Crop them, mat them, even embellish them for a completely new look.

And because they are 'free', you can switch them out whenever you tire of them.  But don't throw them away...use them in one of many other ideas I have for a secondary re-purposing!

As a card maker, I was thrilled at how many cards I could get out of one calendar!  Here's an example of one sheet from last year's calendar I made into 3 legal sized cards.  You can keep it super simple or do a little embellishing to dress it up.

I think this could be a fun get-together with your card making friends come January.  Bring your calendars and see how many cards you can create.

To make this task a little easier I created card making templates.  You can download those templates here.   Go to the PDF file Tab on top to access the downloads.  Simply print and cut out the window.  Now you're ready to use these windows to find the perfect place to cut out your calendar pages.

Little desk calendar are great to re-purposing too. 

I used this little baby animals desk calendar to create a child's busy book. 

I laminated the pages and had it bound.  Cost me about $3 and it's adorable!  Even my 15 year old daughter enjoyed it.



I used another desk calendar with inspirational thoughts for women to create this friendship mini album.

Most wall calendars use seasonal illustrations and photos to match the month and every December has Christmas images.  They can transform ordinary gift bags (even ones you get when you shop) into one of kind originals.

This was so fun, I wished I had more calendars to make more gift bags!



I also really enjoyed using my calendars in home decor.  My favorite was doing a hard lamination to create place mats.  It's trendy and fun to mix & match your table decor and this lends itself perfectly to that.  They will be different, but usually the illustrations are by the same artist so there is a continuity that ties it all together.

I also used them to cover the base of serving platters and plates (as long as they are flat).  Best part is they are removeable.  ( I used ATG scotch tape for all of my projects.)

I also played around with soft lamintation and was happy to discover how easy it was to wrap it around my glass vases.  They were really stunning. 

Again, completely removable if I needed the vase with just the glass or if I wanted to change up the look.

I have several religion-themed calendars that I just couldn't throw away over the years...so glad I didn't.

I'm teaching 11-year-olds at my church and these turned into great visual aids.

Keep the study envelope that these calendars usually come in to store the pictures.

Calendars really are the gift the keeps giving!  Enjoy, Sue