I was doing some cleaning out and reorganizing recently and I came upon a project I did in 2001-2002 that I had forgotten about. Now, here in 2022, I will take a trip down memory lane and show it to you, once each month.
Why this schedule? Because it is a calendar. For 2003.
I made three of these – one for my son, one for my parents, and one for my husband. It’s the last one that I am showing to you. They were all alike except for the covers.
I covered two pieces of matboard with handpainted papers and secured the pages with sections of leather shoelaces wrapped with copper wire.
Inside, I had printed a page for each month with a collage image appropriate to the month. Additionally, I wrote out various things our family thought about or enjoyed doing during the month. Below it, as is usual with a calendar, were the days of the month (I won’t be showing them as it’s just a standard grid, though I did fill the empty day spaces with haiku or poetry, as mentioned above).
I hoped this calendar could be a small record of a certain time in our family. I do not know if my son still has his version, and my parents now are dead and their things scattered and gone, but here it is, a voice speaking up again from the past.
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Here is the collage image I used for the month of April, 2003. It’s called “April Daffodils” and was 14″ x 11″.
Here is the page in the calendar. As a note, Luna, as mentioned in #1, was one of our cats. The robins mentioned in #4 was a family tradition – ever since my son had a kindergarten assignment to make note of when he saw the first robin in spring, I have mentally done the same. You may be interested to know that at the time of this calendar he was in high school. And the geraniums in #9, well – I love geraniums and I have had at least a few pots of them every spring and summer for decades.
Happy April!

This is beautiful, and I love how the mosaic-y aspect adds a surprising kind of depth.
Using papers I painted makes for a lot of flickering color and recombining the various pieces accentuates the effects, I think. I do like working with paper this way.
What a beautiful gift
I really enjoyed making it. I think it’s the first time I ever combined art and writing like this.
Thanks for sharing that work-very lovely! N.
Thank you. It really brought back memories.
Wonderful! (K)
Thank you!
What a fun time capsule! I really like the composition of that collage.
❤️ very nice
Thank you. Wow, it’s been a long time ago that I did this but I still remember how much fun it was.