Advent Calendar!

I’ve never understood what is Christmassy about opening a door each day leading up to Christmas Day, behind the face of a cartoon character, and eating a chocolate before breakfast!

I realise that I’m in the minority, because getting hold of a traditional advent calendar with a festive scene and some glitter is nigh on impossible!

We are a family of traditionalists, and we like to do activities throughout the month.

So this year, I decided to make an activity advent calender instead, with a different thing to do each day.

Planned so far, are things like making mince pies with Nanna, going out to see lights, visiting Father Christmas, eating a picnic meal under the tree, writing cards, delivering gifts to teachers.  And many more!

It was ridiculously easy to make, and fairly inexpensive.  The plan is to reuse it year after year.

For crafty people who may like to use this as inspiration, here are some details!

Board measures 20 x 21 inches. This was cut for £2 at our local supplies store.

Paper was from Dovecraft, the Vintage Christmas range. 12 sheets of 8×8 inches. £2 eBay sample set!

Embellishments were from the same range. About £4 total and I used less than half of them.

Wooden number were £4 from a seller on eBay.

So, it was simple to do.

I took one 8×8 sheet and cut it into 3 strips. 2 measured 8×3 and 1 measured 2×8.

The 2 wider strips were folded in half, with a small bit popping up at the top, around 1cm.

So from the 12 sheets, I got my 24 pouches, which I sealed on each side with thin, strong double sided tape (the red stuff!)

From the smaller 8×2 sheet, I cut that into 2×4 ending up with 24, which became the tabs to pull out, which we will write on each day’s activity.

I embellished with matching brads, gems and buttons.  And some spare papers from the same range that I’d had to buy having made an error on the prototype…

For the tabs, I hot glued a button to the top of each to stop it slipping into the pouch, and to use as a knob to pull them out!

Sticking them to the board was possibly the most complicated part, and I ended up spacing them 11mm apart, top and bottom.  And after measuring the first row, they were done By Eye after that!

I’ve discovered that carpet fitter’s double sided tape is stupidly strong. It’s as thin as crafters double sided tape but stronger than anything I’ve ever come across before. Strong as in forever kind of permanent!

So, all we have to do now is add our activities to the back of our tabs, and it’s ready for December 1st.

Hope you like.

Sam x