Calendar challenge : July/August

August is here, and with it the sharing of the next month's calendar challenge. I enjoyed my July pages. There wasn't much on them when I showed them to you at the beginning of last month.

We are in the middle of winter now in New Zealand so I wanted to reflect that pretty iciness in my pages. I decided that I wanted to continue incorporating stitch on the pages, so did a little experiment with metallic thread, organza and paper which led to these embellishments on my page

I love Anahata Katkin's work, and one of my birthday cards this year included this lovely image of hers, appropriately called "Snow Hat".

Tried to do the journalling with icy colours too, and earlier this week my boys went to the snow - so the snowflake embellishments turned out to be perfectly appropriate :-)

(click to see bigger)

I love to see how each month brings an opportunity to try out something new. August's pages are inspired by a Cloth Paper Scissors article from Jan/Feb this year about making a folder journal.

Folder journal by Karin Winter

This is an example by Karin Winter, one of the article's authors. Click here to see more examples of her journals, and here for a youtube video showing details of the folders that were used to illustrate the article. I really want to make one. If you do too, and don't have the magazine, there are very detailed instructions in this blog post.
Back to the calendar spread! I had these really pretty 7 Gypsies "Conservatory" papers that I had been dying to use.

They were an easy option to make most of the background. 

I managed to add a little bit of stitching on the background, the August label, and to make 3 pockets on the bottom of each page (you can click on the picture if you want a closer look). I then made some tags

I inked lines for journalling, sprayed them with walnut ink, and then added the butterflies. There is one tag to journal on for each week of August.
At first I wasn't sure what would go in the first pocket - I figured inspiration would strike...and it did.

It contains a tag I will use for my "Try something new for 30 days" challenge.
I am really looking forward to filling in my pages. I enjoy the prettiness of them just as they are :-)

If you want to see what other calendar entries there are for this month go to The Kathryn Wheel and don't forget the flickr group
Happy August everyone :-)