2005 Calendar Swap

I will participating in a 2010 calendar round robin with some dear creative friends. In case you have never heard of a calendar swap - i thought i'd post some images to give you some ideas.

Here was my first calendar - back in 2005 - ie before i had a blog to share with you all! I picked a large binder-like calendar that i purchased in Montreal. It was filled with photographs and sketches an artist did while traveling around the world. Mostly African and south american countries. It was beautiful. I added all sorts of fibers and charms to the binding so that it would be exciting for the participating artist to open each month.

Here is the inside cover - i added some vintage map paper and messed it up with ink and sandpaper to age it.

Here was the sign in page - i used air mail envelopes to hold paint chip tags. I used all blues and greens to reflect the water in the oceans crossed by the artists on this journey.

Here is the facing page.

Here is an example of a page "altered" by me. The cool thing about an altered calendar is that you can use the images on the pages as inspiration to create something. And the best things are spontaneous and evolve -in my case, with what supplies i have within arms reach of my craft table. With regular altered books i tend to over-think the collage. Or plan it more.

With the calendars you already have illustrations on the page - so your colour choices are more or less predetermined. So you can grab anything in that theme and stick it to the page. It opens you up to creating more interesting pages - filled with juxtaposition. Here i did some journaling - detailing daily events in the weekly calendar pages. But mostly covered the whole thing up with a transparency. I think it was a Gauguin i printed on a transparency because the colours and mood meshed with the illustrations on the page.

Here you can see i covered a sail boat image with some blue netting - and just scribbled on some swirls and stars. Very haphazard and LOOSE!

Mind you - this calendar was already printed with very loose illustrations or notated photographs. The artists name is Titouan Lamazou if you want to look him up.

Check out his art here.

The artwork that the other 11 artists did in this book are something i will always cherish. I sort of feel funny about scanning their altered pages and posting them here. I'll think about it. But i think it is fare to say that this particular calendar was inspiring to them all.