I spent the whole day (not just a few hours), but the whole day today making four calendars as festive gifts for family members.  I had probably spent a day before that (not all at once) on them as well. There are much quicker, easier and more professional ways to make calendars, but of course I had to decide to make them the slow, not easy and not particularly professional looking way.

It might not look that exciting in the picture, but I drew different patterns around the words for each month and it looks much better with the photos in place.

I decided to make the calendars this way because I wanted to use what we already had.  We had card, pens, rulers, glue, a hole puncher, wool, scissors and sticky tape, which was all I needed (apart from photos) to make these calendars.  We do have a printer but it is out of ink. We only used to use it very rarely and found that there was no point filling it up with ink because it would have dried out by the next time we went to use it. Printer ink is expensive. Buying four ready made calendars (on special offer) would probably cost the same as refilling the printer cartridge and printing out homemade versions.  

So I got out a pen and a ruler and drew the lines on the calendar and hand wrote and decorated the calendars…

I ordered the photos online through photobox as they were offering 60 free prints.  Guttingly they arrived in two plastic box cases (I’m guessing that is why the company is called photobox)!  I will not be ordering photos from there again (although there is probably plastic in the photographs themselves).  I’ve done it now but anyone have any suggestions as to where to buy eco-friendly photographs for next time? Is there such a thing?

I also did badly and ordered a few more prints than I needed for the calendars.  It was just too easy to be tempted as the postage was the same whether I ordered extra prints or not…  I won’t keep them though as I am not allowed to buy anything for myself, so I will give them to other family members…

There were some benefits to making these calendars. I started making them when my kids were around and they wanted to make calendars of their own, so it got them drawing, using rulers and writing/ counting to 30 (well the older one was anyway).  I also found it quite relaxing and I have to say once the calendars were finished I felt a definite sense of satisfaction that I had made them.  Hopefully the people receiving the calendars will appreciate them!  

I had to pay postage of around £3 for the photos and the materials used couldn’t have come to any more than £1 (I had, had the materials for a while, so can’t say exactly how much they came to). It was a very cheap, but time intensive way to make 4 calendars… I’m not sure how eco-friendly the overall result was – so my advice to myself is ‘must try harder next time’.

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!