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Tuesday 6 December 2016

Home Made Advent Calendar

I've always wanted to make an advent calendar and pick out 24 little gifts to fill it. As this is the first Christmas living with my boyfriend he got to be the lucky recipient. Though it turns out finding 24 little gifts for a boy, that isn't just chocolate, is pretty tricky.

I went through several different options for making the calendar. I thought about hanging little packages on a string, using brown envelopes, stacking matchboxes. In the end I went with cereal variety boxes, which I found for £1 for a pack of 8.

I emptied the boxes (rice krispie cakes anyone?) and cut off the flaps from one end. I stuck the boxes together using a glue gun. Once all 24 boxes were in place I stuck card to the sides to hide the packaging.

I also thought through a few different versions for the windows on the calendar, but settled on simple card flaps that I glued to the bottom of each box. I used two different colours; maroon with a snowflake pattern and a shimmery pale gold. Completely coincidentally these colours matched the decorations my boyfriend has for his Christmas tree. 

I printed out the numbers on to stickers and used my circle paper punch to cut them out.

Then all I needed to do was fill the boxes, stick on the numbers and close the windows which had to be done by dabbing on a few spots of PVA glue on the edge of the boxes and holding down the card until it dried. Which was done on November 30th. I finished it just in time!

I won't show you what I put inside the boxes in case my boyfriend reads this, but I can tell you that so far he's received; tea bags, chocolate coins, a small pencil with a fun rubber, a Barney bear cake, a pencil sharpener that looks like a nose and a pair of Christmas pants which he wore that day.

If the calendar stays in one piece we're planning to use it again next year with him filling half the boxes for me and me filling the other half for him. 

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