A Page a month - New project for 2012

Hi, Leo here.
Today I'm making a start on a new project, 'A page a month'. It's a way to both make use of leftover bits and pieces and to document the year in a clear and simple way. I've picked a clean simple format to stick to and set about pre-preparing the album so it's ready to fill throughout the year. For my album I've picked out one I already had and hadn't used yet it's an American Crafts 8.5x11 size ring bound album. I like the ringbinder format because it means I can add more to it as I go along if I want to.
To each page I want to add a month so I've picked out the Elle's Studio 2012 Monthly Pennants from the Snow Drifts Quirky Kit Lite. You could also use the callendar cards from the Snow Stories kit too.

Now I need a place to incorporate the month on each page but I don't yet want to start building the actual pages because I'd like to include bits and pieces of the new kits as I go so I've decided on a layout for each page of 8x8.5 inches. That leaves a small portion of 3x8.5 inches to play with where I can add a date or add extra notes etc. The way I've incorporated this extra space is to cut out strips of paper to 3x8.5 size like this:

I've rounded the bottom corners and glued two pieces together back to back as both sides will show.
Once it's cut out I've then slid it into a page protector. I've then stitched along the top edge of the paper with my sewing machine. This created the 8x8.5 inch pocket for the pages at the top of the paper strip.

For the page base I've just used a piece of kraft cardstock cut to size to fit in the top pocket ready to decorate. I've rounded the corners of these too just for interest.

I'm going to add all the decoration on the strip right on top of the page protector but if you wanted to you could add it to the strip first and then stitch it inside your page protector or you could just glue the month detail strip on top of the page protector without any sewing.
Here's what my finished January base page looks like:

All ready for my January pages, I'll be making two pages, one for the front and one for the back of each page protector, one for each month to make 24 pages in total. I figure I can always add more pages in between too as I go.
I'll add some more of the base pages as I finish them but I'm mostly using Quirky Kit leftovers for this apart from the album and the extra cardstock.All the papers I've used here are from Snow Stories and Snow Drifts. The boarder sticker is from the Glasonbury Fields Lite kit.
x Leo