Truly a work in progress...

So, I had to make dividers for my altered tin that I made in my class, and then I decided I really didn't need dividers for this tin. So, what to do with them?

Make a mini wall calendar for 2010 - which I soon found out is a lot like making a mini album. And maybe it's just me, but it seems like one either needs to have a mini album planned down to the inch OR just add stuff as you go and pray it looks good and take forever and a day.

Strangely enough, I've chosen the latter method and I am enjoying it but I have even more of a respect for a good mini album creator's skills and talent. My calendar is still in process, but I thought I would share a few photos with you because I think it will be fun to compare these with the finished project. Plus, I have an ulterior motive -- I would love to get advice or suggests from you about what more I can add or what process you follow.

Here's what I have so far. I am showing the closed cover of the calendar next to the tin it will go into (part of a package I'm making for a family Christmas present), so you can see the coordinated papers. I've got all 7 4x6 chipboard pages covered with paper. I have my edges cornered-rounded and I've got my Bind-It-All holes punched. I'm holding it together temporarily with ribbon so that I keep my page orders and will bind the coil on last.

I've also got a few of the page elements adhered. Remember, I have no master plan, other than every page has a calendar month on it, and printed out paper strips of family birthdays (haven't printed those yet). So, I'm basically cutting elements out of the papers and / or using scrap bits that look like they go well. The border-punched vellum on the left side of the Feb. page (above) was a scrap laying in my box, so I had to use it. Then I used the rest of the sheet it was attached to as a base for a few of the monthly calendar sheets that I found on the internet and printed out.

Here's a pristinely blank page spread with nothing on it yet, just to show the pretty paper, lol.

And the last two pages for November and December that I have started on. I'm doing a little something different on each page and trying to use up my paper scraps, too. I think I may pull out the old blue Quickutz tool and dies and punch out some little doodads and flourishes and whatnot.

I'm not concentrating on how bad this looks, because there are many flaws if you look carefully. Instead, I am focussing on how good it looks without me having a design gameplan and it being my very first mini in a long while. (I did make my Focus mini-album a couple of years ago that was for a round robin, but I only made a few pages in it myself and they were carefully planned out.)

I think that once I get to feeling like I'm about finished decorating the pages, I will look at distressing it a bit by sanding down all the page edges and adding a little paint with a dry brush. I may or may not, depending on how it looks at that point. All I know is, you gotta be prepared, organized and ready to work on one of these babies in order to finish one relatively quickly. The process is rewarding, though, whether ya go fast or slow. I'm having a blast!