Presenting the clearalbums.com Calendar / Timekeeping Challenge!

Our Challenge To You!

The Challenge: Create a brand new, creative calendar, day planner, book of days, daily journal, or art book focusing on calendars or time keeping of some sort. It should focus on either a time in the future (2009, most likely) or possibly a time in the distant past if you’d like to do a heritage themed project. Please don’t submit anything from the recent past (for example, no 2007 or 2008 please!) If you do a day planner type project, it does not have to be for an entire year- it could be for a week or for a month or whatever you like! You can be as traditional as you like or as crazy and creative as you like interpreting this theme- for example, you could choose to make an illustrated story book about calendars or time keeping if you don’t feel like doing a traditional calendar. You also can use whichever calendar strikes your fancy, whether it be the Gregorian Calendar, the Hebrew Calendar, the Aztec calendar stone, the Mayan calendar, or your own made up fantasy calendar. This project must be completed in such a way that it fits the theme of clearalbums.com, using your choice of clear albums or sheer albums. (Any shape. Any size.)

Where To Buy Calendar Themed Supplies, Stamps, Papers, and Embellishments:

If you’d like to take a look at some brand new calendar themed supplies, you have come to the right place. We put together a page featuring a whole bunch of brand new calendar themed rubber stamps, clear stamps, papers, and embellishments. Please click here to see the calendar supplies page.We hope you will find it handy if you want to shop for new calendar related supplies.

Some Clear Calendar Inspiration For You!

Our design team has been hard at work creating their own interpretations of this calendar challenge! We hope you will be inspired by their clear calendar albums.

Lilly's School Diary Clear Album:

Mel Nunn created this exquisite school diary using a clear album by Pageframe Designs, and papers and embellishments from Basic Grey's Urban Prairie collection. Mel titled this calendar "Lilly's School Diary", and she designed the calendar for her daughter Lilly. She wanted to create an extra special calendar album complete with space for photographs, so that her daughter could keep the album as a permanent memento from her first year of school. Mel created the calendar digitally, and she has generously shared her digital calendar templates with us. They are available to you as free downloads. You can click here to see more photos of this calendar, read Mel's complete supply list, read her project instructions for creating the calendar, and download her free calendar template pages to use in your own project.

Scalloped 2009 Clear Calendar Album With Chipboard:

Amy Solovay created this fancy scalloped 2009 calendar using 2 Scalloped Albums by Clear Scraps; one of the scalloped albums is clear acrylic, and the other is chipboard. You can click here to see more photos plus the supply list and instructions for this 2009 calendar album.

"This is My Gift", a Clear Tag Mini Album

Christi Wright used a creative, out of the box approach to this challenge! Instead of creating a traditional calendar album, she created this clear tag mini scrapbook album in timeline format to document her son's life from birth to the present day. She used calendar themed embellishments throughout the mini album, plus photographs of her son and heartfelt journaling. The tag album itself is by Scrapworks. Please click here to see Christi's complete supply list, project instructions, and more pictures of the album.

Calendars Make Great Holiday Gifts!

We hope the calendars our design team has shared will inspire you creatively and help motivate you to get working on your own clear calendars! If you need some gift ideas and inspiration, remember, calendars make versatile holiday gifts! If you are tired of buying impersonal store bought gifts for your loved ones, this is the perfect opportunity to create a unique one of a kind gift that the recipient will enjoy all year long. Even better, make some calendars to give away to friends and colleagues, and another one to keep for yourself!

The Prizes!

We will be awarding one Grand Prize Package to the designer whose project is voted the Best Overall Clear Calendar Challenge Entry. The Grand Prize Package is pictured here:

The Grand Prize is a Scrapbooking Kit Containing a Clear Scraps Tabbed Album Plus Lots More Papers and Embellishments as follows:

• One Clear Scraps 6x6 Tab Acrylic Album ~ This is a 5-page clear acrylic album, which includes 3 metal binder rings. Clear Scraps products are high quality and versatile. You will really enjoy using them! They are made with pride in the USA.
• One Package of Clear Scraps Acrylic XL Dots: 2 Extra Large Circles measuring approx. 12 inches and 8 inches in diameter.
• One Package of Clear Scraps Acrylic Slides Embellishments ~ There are 4 clear acrylic pieces in the pack.
• One package of Thickers foam shape stickers by American Crafts. These 3-dimensional embellishments are sure to add texture and interest to your clear albums and scrapbooking layouts!
• One package of Details Luggage Stickers by American Crafts. As the name suggests, these are highly detailed, layered scrapbooking embellishments.
• One package of Travel Themed Guesthouse Patterned Chipboard Embellishments by American Crafts. This package contains over 20 patterned chipboard pieces in 4 distinct shapes, 3 sizes, and 4 colors. These are very cute and trendy, but the designs are also sleek stylish classic shapes that will stand the test of time and look great in your scrapbooks for years to come.
• 4 pieces of double-sided patterned paper from the American Crafts Travel Collection: Visa, Token, Passport, and Postcard.
• One package of Gingham Ribbon from Doodlebug Designs. Colors: Beetle Black & Blue Jean. The package contains approx. 2 yards of ribbon.
• One package of repositionable, self-adhesive Magic Mesh in the silver fine weave pattern. Package contains approx. 1 yard of mesh. If you want to see a project idea using Magic Mesh, you can click here to see a clear calendar album where it is used on the front cover.)
• 3 Packages of assorted Rub-ons by Hambly Screen Prints. These rub-ons are hand silk screened and made in the USA.
• 12" x 12" Hambly Transparency / Overlay: The Birdcages. Acid Free / Lignin Free.
• 12" x 12" Hambly Transpency / Overlay: Climbing Vine. Acid Free / Lignin Free.
• 12" x 12" Hambly Transpency / Overlay: Decor Notes. Acid Free / Lignin Free.
• 4 pieces of Bazzill cardstock in assorted colors.

Most Creative Clear Calendar Prize:

The entrant who submits the most creative clear calendar album project will receive a prize too! The prize for this creative winning entry is 2 packages of Clear Scraps scalloped tags plus a metal binder ring. You can use the tags and binder ring to create your own mini clear album, or you can use the tags separately as embellishments for scrapbook layouts, greeting cards, altered art projects, and other paper crafts projects.

Prize For One Randomly Drawn Entry:

We will randomly choose one prize winner from all contest entries (whether or not you were a finalist!) So even if you are a beginning scrapbooker or have never worked with clear albums before, we encourage you to give this challenge a try, because you could win! The randomly drawn winner will receive an idea book called Clear Albums For Scrappin' by Janet Blair & Design Team, published by Design Originals.

Challenge Rules:

• You can use any manufacturer's clear albums. We don't care whose clear albums you choose to work with; we love them all! Your finished clear calendar album can be any size or shape you choose. If you're feeling especially creative, you can design and make your own! If you do, be sure to tell us all about how you did it! Don't forget that Clear Scraps acrylic sheets can be die cut into shapes using the Sizzix die cutting machine, and also the Accucut die cutting machine. So if you want to create your own custom shaped acrylic clear album, keep that in mind!
• You may submit as many entries as you like, but please send one separate email per entry.
• International entries are welcome, and encouraged!
• If your entry contains photographs, you must submit model releases and photographers releases along with your entry. In other words, you must get permission from the person or people who appear in the photographs to use their photograph(s) in your contest entry, and you must get permission from the photographer who took your photos to use their work in your contest entry. This is because, if you are chosen as a finalist, their photographs will be posted on this web site, and we wouldn't want to do that without having their permission! Click here for the model release and click here for the photographer's release. There is no need to do this if you submit a project that does not have any photographs in it.
• The Deadline for submission is January 4, 2009, midnight at Pacific Time. Entries received after the deadline will not be considered.
• Incomplete entries may be rejected at our discretion.
• Entries that do not follow the rules and guidelines will not be considered.
• Members of the clearalbums.com design team are not eligible to participate in this challenge.
• The judges' decisions will be final.

How To Enter Your Calendar Project in the Challenge:

Email all of the following to .

• Your name
• Your email address
• Your snailmail address (so we know where to send your prize if you win one!)
• Supply list for the supplies used in your calendar. Please be specific! Here is an example. Good: Album- Clear Scraps 6x6 tabbed acrylic album. Paper- Basic Grey Urban Prairie Monarch. Not so good: Album- Clear Scraps. Paper- Basic Grey.
• Any other information you'd like to point out about your project- for example, if you used a technique that needs explanation, etc.
• Photo releases if your project contains photographs

How Judging Works:

After you submit your contest entry, our preliminary judges will evaluate your entry on a points system. Here are some of the things we are going to be taking into consideration:

• Design: composition, balance, placement of elements, cohesiveness, harmony, beauty, and overall aesthetic appeal.
• Creativity: including but not limited to an innovative project theme, creative use of supplies, creative interpretation of the challenge etc.
• Use of Color: effective and harmonious use of color, whether you choose to use brights, neutrals, pastels, shades of black and white, or a mix of all the above!
• Craftsmanship
• Techniques: Use this challenge as an opportunity to show us all the creative, unique, innovative, wild, and crazy techniques you can do with clear albums!

Any entry that receives more than a 75% total points score in the primary round of the challenge will be posted on the clearalbums.com web site and recognized as a finalist. After the deadline for entries has passed, our design team will evaluate all the finalists on a point score, and the points awarded to each project by all the judges will be totaled. The project with the highest total point value will be named the grand prize winner. The project with the highest total points in the "Creativity" category will be awarded the title of "most creative project" . One winner will be chosen randomly regardless of points awarded, so that everyone truly does have a chance to win a prize in this contest!

If all goes according to plan, we anticipate that the winners will be announced on or before the week of February 1st, and that prizes will be mailed out shortly thereafter.

We hope that this challenge will inspire you to get busy creating! We cannot wait to see all your amazing and creative calendar challenge projects! Thanks in advance to everyone who submits a project for this challenge.