3 Creative Things to Do with Last Year’s Calendar

It is the time of year again when Chinese New Year is approaching, and we begin to spring clean our home in preparation for visiting our relatives and friends. Sorting out your stuff and purging outdated and unwanted items. Instead of trashing everything out, consider donating items in good condition, such as clothes. Recycle small electronics and laptops in e-waste bins, and my favourite word starts with the letter R, Reusing/ upcycling.

I have gathered calendars I had lying around at home and those I collected from friends and family. I decided to unleash my creative side and search for ways to upcycle last year’s calendars. Most of the calendars I received are made of quality prints on cardstock and other good-quality paper with a classic tabletop stand, which is ridge and stable.

Old Calendars pictures for handmade greeting cards and crafts – The images from calendars are primarily of excellent quality, be they glossy or matt. Some come with beautiful quotes; others with the seasons of the year. There are a wide variety of topics to choose from, which make excellent artwork for greeting cards, crafts such as notebooks, and coasters. The possibilities are endless. I don’t have the dexterity to handle the scissors well, so I use my trusty paper trimmer to cut out the pictures I want in squares or rectangles. I snipped out all the images I liked and kept them in my tin box for future use.

Old Calendar as a tabletop photo stand- I love keeping Polaroid, Instax and HP Sprockets photo prints that I have taken from my friends and family. A way I display them is using the cardboard stand from the calendars, right after I gently rip out the pages, careful as you do so as the metal binder can go out of shape if excessive force is used, with a bit of blu-tack. I can interchange the photos I want to display without spending a dime on a stand or photo frame, and if the stand gets old, you can always recycle it.

Turning an old calendar into a scrapbook– A video by Momz recipe & more on YouTube inspired me to create my own scrapbook using an old calendar. The materials you require are drawing block papers, glue, and scissors. It is so simple that it is ingenious of her to come up with such a fantastic idea just by cutting off the base of the Calendar and wrapping up the calendar pages with paper. I really like my upcycle scrapbook. The rigid pages make it perfect for storing my paintings; I started to learn how to paint in November and didn’t have a proper place to keep my mini images; I didn’t want to display them either but kept them to see my progress in the craft, I didn’t want to spend too much on the hobby, so the upcycled scrapbook is the perfect keepsake.

An extra treat for some calendars is the sticker page, which you could use to mark days on leave or for appointment reminders. Most of the time, they are unused by their previous owners, so it feels incredible getting hold of them to use on my planners.

All the scarps, unwanted pages, and metal binder leftover from my craft are sent for recycling. I usually keep these for a trusted recycling company and ensure everything is in pristine condition without any glue or adhesive, which may hinder the recycling process.

I really enjoyed writing this piece on upcycling. The experience of turning something old into something new is refreshing and looking at my end products just brings me so much joy.