We love calendars! How about you? Ever wondered what to do when the calendar is done but you aren’t ready to part with all the beautiful quilt pictures? We have 7 ideas for how to recycle your calendars.
- Quilt Coasters – Cut out the quilt image and decoupage it onto a coaster. It makes a lovely accent and is useful too!
- Mini Masterpieces – Snip out your favorite quilts and frame them with little frames from the dollar store. Hang them in a lovely arrangement or sprinkle them on surfaces throughout your house. A moment of inspiration for every room!
- Creative Clip Boards – Glue a collection of quilt pictures to the front of a clip board. These clipboards are great for collecting tidbits about ongoing projects and when they aren’t in use they can hang smartly on the wall showing off beautiful quilts!
- Quilt Cards – Cut out bits of the quilts and make collage cards to send notes to your friends and family. You can even include one with your utility bill – you never know who needs a quilt in their life.
- Notion Jars – Cut out circles from the quilt pictures and use them on top of jar lids to decorate notion jars in your creative space.
- Placemats – Cut a piece of cardstock placemat size and glue a collage of quilts on it, then laminate it and use as a placemat. Quilt placemats make interesting conversational pieces and lovely accents for a lunch gathering.
- Inspiration Journal – Save your favorites and tape them to a page in your Inspiration Journal to give you ideas and spark your creativity!
Need an old calendar full of incredible quilt pictures? Or a new calendar for the upcoming year? We have QuiltArt and Wall Calendars year round.
If you love paper crafts, we have more ideas for quilting paper craft fun!
Sound off in the comments with ideas of how to recycle calendars to keep the inspiration going!
You can also just save them to use again! Once you know the day of the week that January 1 falls on, and whether the year is a leap year or not, the rest of the year is determined. There are only 14 diffferent calendars, 7 non-leap, 7 leap. If January 1 is a Sunday, as for 2017, then any non-leap calendar with January 1 on a Sunday will work. For example, 2006 or 1995 or 1989. Leap years are harder – they repeat only every 28 years. Non-leap repeats follow a pattern, 11 years, 11 years, 6 years, 11-11-6, and so on.
I make envelopes from them, my Grands love getting letters and cards in them. Make patterns from commercial envelopes, use double-face tape or glue on the sides, you have a beautiful envelope! A printed or blank label must be used on the front for the addressee and a small return address. This also works great for those gorgeous scenic calendars that we hate to toss into the recycle bin!
I get oodles of free calendars in the mail every year. We have nieces who are teachers and they love them for art projects with their students.
Saw blog that one quilters uses numbers to pin to her rows to mark location in assembling a quilt. Lots cheaper that buying special pins. 12 times 31 numbers
Check youtube for instructions on making your own gift bags. Calendars are usually on sturdy and pretty paper and you will have lovely little gift bags at no cost. You just need a glue stick and a piece of ribbon or twine for the handle.
That is how I proceed 🙂
You can fold them into paper origami boxes (top and bottom) to use as gift boxes or to store your small items (jewelry, paper clips, etc.). Just cut out large squares and look for instructions on the internet (masu box).
we make nesting origami boxes from calendars every year. Especially pretty with quilt calendars.
I cut them up for bookmarks and donate to the library
I use the block numbers to label blocks of quilts as I get the finished. I also use them if a set of numbers is needed a in as drawing or a game for family.
I fold them with the quilt on the outside and the numbers on the inside, I machine stitch the two sides, and then use double-sided tape on the “envelope flap” egde — they make great envelopes — just add a white label when doing the address. On my return-address label, I add “to open, tap to one end and cut the other end.” They are colorful mailing pieces that add a little joy to life. Standard postage rates unless it is “non-machinable” which is 70 cents.
I use the calendars in my scrapbooks–they fit perfectly in the 12 x 12 protectors and then I can enjoy all of the projects I don’t have time to make myself!
Brightly colored paper also makes lovely paper beads!