PBSC January - Anything Goes (Optional - Something New!')

It's the first Saturday of the month, so that means it's time for a new Penny Black Saturday Challenge...where the theme is:

'Anything Goes'

or

'Something New'

As usual, we are sponsored by the awesome 1-2-3 Stitch:

Prize - a $20 voucher!

I went with 'New Year' as my Something New, and am sharing the calendar I made for my Mum for Christmas. Every year I decorate a couple of the Paper Mill blank calendars to give as gifts, and use exclusively Penny Black images. The panel on each month is A6 in size, and I used lots of snippets from a mixture of brands for the simple backgrounds. I distressed the edges of everything, and added some faux stitching to the papers using my CutterBee Bug and a black gel pen. I won't list the names of all of the images, or papers...partly because there are too many to list, but also because I can't remember and I'm not at home able to check!

I'm also entering this calendar into the following challenges:

• 2 Crafty Critter Crazies - Anything Goes
• Crafty Gals Corner - Anything Goes
• Penny's Paper Crafty - Anything Goes
• Simon Says Stamp (Wednesdays) - Something New (New Year)

For more inspiration from my lovely DT buddies, please pop over to the Penny Black Saturday Challenge.

January Desk Calendar

Today I'm sharing my desk calendar page for January. I've made one of these for myself for each of the last few years, and get the blank calendars from Paper Mill Direct. Once again, I'm going to use all Penny Black stamps, and picked the 'Birthday Bears' set to use for January. I stamped them on to a snippet of watercolour paper, and used the number stamps in the set to add the year, then coloured them using watercolour pencils, before arefully cutting them out. For the background, I used a snippet of star covered paper from the 'Shine Like the Stars' pad from The Works, matting it on to a snippet of kraft card, having distressed the edges a little. I added a little gold star left over from making these tags.

Challenges for this calendar:

• Crafting Happiness - Happy New Year
• Little Red Wagon - New Beginnings
• Simon Says Stamp (Wednesdays) - Something New (New Year)
• Time Out - Beginnings