Iron Craft #1: Note Card Journal

I happened upon this project over a year ago and thought it was absolutely awesome, so I planned on starting it right away in 2011. And then I didn't. And then I found it again a few months later, but who wants to start a calendar type project in the middle of the year? So I knew in 2012 it was going to happen. If I remembered it. And I did!

You'll have to keep reading to find out how it works, but first, the detail shots of the postcard dividers for each month. They are all things that I love, or things I thought were pretty and inspiring at the time I was making them.

January: A mug of coffee (this photo was actually from an ad for Caribou Coffee, my absolute favorite).
February: It's hard to see, but it's Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet that starts "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." I cut up a book for this project. That was actually hard for me to do, but it was a book I had gotten for free specifically for craft projects, so it's okay?

March: The only postcard I kept as is, aside from adding a tag for the word "March".
April: I knew I wanted sheet music and a pretty flower, and the elephant just fit very nicely with this one. I used a combination of cutouts from magazines, greeting cards, and cardstock I already had, so no money spent on materials!

May: The background was a photo of blankets and pillows on a bed. I love sleep, but I don't get nearly enough of it.
June: William Wordsworth's "Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". One of my favorites since my freshman year of high school in Professor Kirk's class.

July: One of the best iconic photos there is, and a great way to celebrate the month of our anniversary.
August: Martha Stewart Living magazine had a spread awhile back of a bunch of old cookbooks from various decades, and I saved the few pages because I thought they were neat. I used them for both August and September.

September: More old cookbooks, these from the 1940s, because I love baking!
October: A cool map of part of Africa from a magazine, and a church from a greeting card. A nice reminder to go spread God's Word.

November: The third and final cut into the book (for now). There was this cool picture of a town in the front of the book that I stole a part of.
December: Candy canes, a snowflake, and a nativity. Pretty much everything but the tree (which I almost put in that corner, but the colors were off).

Here's my big stack of note cards, cut in half, one for each day. (We had a huge pile of note cards, and after I took some for this project, there were a whopping four left). Here's how this works: Each day you write the year and one sentence about what happened that day. The first year isn't as exciting, but every year after that you can look back and see what happened on that day.

The note card journal in action. Love it!