I haven't shown you all my desk calendar for this year ... so I thought it was time to remedy that! I've been making it with 4-inch coasters, attached together with ribbon "hinges", so it can stand up like a book on my desk. Well, I finally ran out of those 4-inch coasters, so Ellen's Craft-A-Board came to my rescue! I cut two pieces 4" x 4" and rounded the corners with the 1/4-inch side of WRM's Crop-a-Dile Corner Chomper. Then I covered the CAB with Cosmo Cricket's DeLovely 6x6 patterned papers ... so bright, cheerful & summery!
I thought Karen Lockhart's Beach Chair image would be perfect for this month starting off the summer season ... I can't wait to be on a beach chair in the sand at the beach somewhere, and will be dreaming of it until the end of the month when I get there! I stamped it with Memento Tuxedo Black ink onto Neenah Classic Crest Natural White cardstock and colored it with these Copic markers:
Next, I trimmed the image to 3.25" x 3.25", punched the corners with Martha Stewart's Sand Dollar Corner Punch and the straight edges with Beach Shells Edger Punch ... I love how this frame turned out! Then I masked off the shell edges and airbrushed Copic BG11 on the background:
The edges of the shell frame and blue paper behind it were inked with Antique Linen Distress Ink and here's the easy way I accomplished this:
Here's a great Ranger tip I came up with: Antique Linen Distress Ink is my favorite Distress Ink color and I use it on the edges of about 80% of my work! So while browsing Ellen's store, I came across this empty Ranger Standard Foam Pad and I wondered how it would work as pad to ink the edges of my artwork. So I inked one end of the foam pad with my Antique Linen Distress Reinker and now I have a quick and easy pad to grab and ink the edges of anything! This foam pad is soft and gives a softer look to inked edges than the standard felt pad of the Distress Ink pads. Now I certainly may not be the first person to think of this, but I certainly was bouncing in my chair when I discovered it worked so well!
One hint: It won't take as much reinker as you might think to soak the pad, so go lightly at first, letting the ink gradually absorb into the pad and testing it after each addition -- until you have it inked as you'd like. I made the mistake of putting way too much reinker on the first time and ended up blotting off quite a lot of the ink because it swiped onto the edges of cardstock darker than I usually prefer. I also have room on the other end of the pad to for a different color -- I hope you have fun with this idea!
Next, I printed my computer-generated calendar onto Neenah Classic Crest Natural White cardstock, trimmed it to 3.25" wide, and used the same Martha Stewart punches on the lower edge of this piece and the Corner Chomper on the top corners. The month name of "June" was spelled out with Cosmo Cricket's Cream Tiny Type Letters ("dream" on the beach chair image is also from this set of stickers) and Copic BG11 airbrushed lightly on this background, too.
The finishing touch is a top border of Neenah Natural White cardstock punched with the border punch again, inked with Antique Linen Distress Ink, and then the whiter star-shaped punched-out pieces of cardstock glued back onto the border for some contrast and texture!
I hope this June calender gives you a few helpful hints for your summer papercrafting and helps to put you in the spirit of summer!
Stamps: Lockhart Stamp Company-Beach Chair
Paper: Cosmo Cricket DeLovely 6x6, Neenah Classic Crest Natural White cardstock
Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black; Ranger Antique Linen Distress Reinker; Copic markers: E30, E33, BG11, BG72, RV14, Y15, W1
Accessories: Copic Airbrush System-1, Essentials by Ellen Craft-A-Board, WRM Crop-a-Dile Corner Chomper, Ranger Standard Foam Pad, Martha Stewart Sand Dollar Corner Punch & Beach Shells Edger Punch, Cosmo Cricket Cream Tiny Type Letters
