“Hello! I have a desk calender that has a bunch of quotes from “the office” TV show. I have saved all the pages because I would like to use them in someway… whether it be decorative or just useful. Any ideas?” I love old calendars. When my girlies were littler, I would gather up wall calendars and cut the big, splashy monthly images up into simple puzzles for them to put together. I still snatch up those puzzle-a-day desk calendars whenever I see one at a thrift store–they’re great to pass around the car during road trips, and when a page is finished, it can go right into our backseat recycling bag. Because desk calendars are made of that most versatile of craft materials–paper!!!–you’ll find that you can make some pretty great projects with them using some of our favorite methods here at CAGW. Here are five tutorials to get you started: For a page-a-day desk calendar, a decoupaged tile coaster like this one from D. Salmons (posting here at CAGW) is just about the perfect project. Since tiles come in different sizes, you’ll be able to find a plain coaster that fits your calendar page really well, and you’ll pay just pennies for it. From a calendar featuring “The Office,” I’m imagining making a personalized tile for each of the reader’s co-workers, to use as coasters on all their desks. [Image credit: desk calendar photo via Shutterstock] Next » If you’re into scrapbooking or card making, then homemade stickers are an excellent way to add graphics, quotes, or even specific dates from a calendar to your project. For instance, when making a handmade card to accompany a baby gift or a wedding gift, you could feature a cut-out of the date of that special event. Funny quotes cut out of a desk calendar are a better embellishment to a scrapbook page than over-packaged, over-priced scrapbook stickers purchased from a big-box craft store. Next »
To use up lots of interesting little graphics or quotes, it can be fun to decoupage a larger object. This decoupaged vase from How about Orange was done using an old hymn book. To do the same with a matte paper daily desk calendar, first decoupage a background on the object–perhaps scrapbook paper, or the gridded squares from a monthly calendar?–then decoupage selected quotes or graphics that you want to feature on top of the background. You could decoupage the same type of object, such as a vase or a set of ornaments, every year with the previous year’s old calendar, and have yourself quite a collection some day. [Image from How about Orange, used with permission] Next » If it’s just the calendar itself that you’d like to upcycle, and not any particular images or words from the calendar, then origami may be what you want to do. These recycled origami hearts from the Paper Source blog don’t rely on a particular size of paper, so anything from your page-a-day desk calendar to your giant wall calendar will suit. If you start folding in your spare time as soon as you’ve upgraded your calendars to the new 2012 edition, then you’ll have a bowlful of origami hearts to hand out well in advance of Valentine’s Day. [image from Paper Source, used with attribution] Next » To show off just one or two special calendar graphics (or quotes from “The Office”), choose to decoupage an object that allows such a featured presentation. This decoupaged picture frame from from Dill Pickle Design, for instance, has space at the top for just one quote representing the undying love between Jim and Pam, with a photo in the frame of you and your love, of course, or a quote from Dwight, perhaps, with a photo of your oddest friend. [image from Dill Pickle Design, used with attribution]
