Showing posts with label Advent Calendar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advent Calendar. Show all posts

Monday, December 2, 2013

December Daily Advent Calendar

I've been so busy getting my book out that I haven't been posting on Sunday, so I'm posting my usual Scrappy Sunday post a day late. I've been seeing advent calendars around town and on Pinterest lately, and I've wanted to make one for a while. So when I saw a plain craft one at Hobby Lobby, I couldn't resist.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the blank box. So just imagine it here.


Here was the next step. I got really lucky and found out my square punch fit the drawers almost exactly! It made it a breeze. Even without, you could use a paper cutter to easily cut out 25 squares. I used an old collection of Basic Grey paper I had, Blitzen collection, and one page of the Dasher collection. Then I used my circle punch to cut out a little spot on each square. I wasn't too picky about placement, as you can see! But I did the whole thing on December 1st, so I didn't stress about making it perfect. I inked the edges of each piece of paper with red ink from an Around the Block inkpad.


After I had that step done, which took several hours, I started to do the numbers and embellishments. I mod-podged everything on. I am not very creative, so at this point I went to Pinterest to find something inspiring. I found the toolbox calendar on this post helpful. I used her method of getting numbers from any source possible. I have tons of letter stickers, so I used number stickers off some of those sheets. I also used chipboard, some little tags I had from getting my car serviced (I never throw anything away, and once in a blue moon, that is a benefit!), cutout from Making Memories paper and 7 gypsies bingo card paper, an ATC from Paper Studios, Smashpads calendar tape, and 7 gypsies ephemera for the numbers.




Then I added embellishments. Again, I used a lot of stuff I've had for a long time. I didn't buy anything for this project except the box, which was great. I have a big bag of Christmas stuff, and it was nice to use some of it up, and a nice challenge, too. I'm not even sure where some of them came from. But some embellishments I used are:
word strips from Making Memories (Day 2, 24), We R Memory Keepers washi tape (6, 11), Spare Parts acrylic sticker (Day 20), Love Elsie (22).
Other: stickers, 3-D stickers, ribbon, bakers twine, tags, punchout snowflakes, copper word accent

The last thing I did was fill the drawers. It was so fun putting it all together. I put little candies in some of the drawers (See's Candy, our favorite), a few pairs of Christmas socks, some little presents like Lego mini figures, and a bunch of paper strips with tasks on them, like donate old toys to charity, sing carols with the family, take Christmas photos, visit Santa, etc.