Homemade Gift: Cards from a Page a Day Calendar

My friend has several page-a-day calendars she has collected from thrift stores. After I saw how well they worked for cards, I've kept an eye out for them in my own thrifting adventures. I haven't had much luck until a few weeks ago. I found a Kinkade tear-off calendar (for 2011) with every page still intact. I'm not sure who decided not to use this, but it's their loss. I only paid $1 for it, and I got 365 beautiful images to use on cards.

Since these images are beautiful in their own right, I don't have to load the cards themselves with embellishments. This is especially nice for masculine cards, which is what I made first:



I usually give you closeups of the cards I make, but there's no way I was going to upload 18 cards that followed the same basic pattern. :) How about just one?



I simply went through the calendar and chose several images that I thought were particularly masculine (since they're some of the hardest cards to make). Then I paired them with papers that matched, left room for a sentiment (so they're more versatile), and I had 18 cards made in no time.

I may make the feminine cards a little fancier, but this format was perfect for these manly cards.

I did a similar project with a Mary Engelbreit book a few years ago, and I'm still not through with all of those notecards. (They come in very handy, though!)