Advent Calendar DIY

by This Dear Casa

6 Materials

$50

2 Hours

Easy

This craft came about when a friend on Instagram asked if I wanted to join a Holiday Craft and Home Tour Train. So fun, right?! Of course I said yes. I had an ornament idea in mind, but had no luck buying the supplies I needed. After failing to secure the supplies for the ornaments I originally wanted to make, I remembered that I hadn’t bought my usual Trader Joe’s Advent calendar. Since the pandemic hit, the lines at Trader Joe’s have been really long and I have mostly avoided going there! So what a perfect time to make my own Advent calendar. Bonus- my kiddo and I have been working on counting and this ties in so well!

I made a trip to Michael’s craft store and bought some supplies. However, once I got home and started to map out how I wanted the item to look, I ended up using mostly supplies I already had! Does that ever happen to you? I think just the act of walking around Michael’s helped me to hash out the idea. That’s usually how I work- gather inspiration, sit and play with materials to execute my idea!

Try this wreath tutorial to bring a little shine to the holidays.

Once I had a rough idea of what I was doing, I remembered a frame that’s been sitting in my basement. I actually have two. I found them left out for trash one day. It was when we lived in California, and I dragged them up to Seattle! Cardboard canvas, paint samples, pins, and homemade tassels as ornaments. The gold star for my tree topper is the only item I ended up using from my Michael’s trip!

After I measured the opening of the frame, I painted an all white background.

After the white paint dried, I used the star as my guide to draw the shape of my triangle. I wasn’t very detailed at this; didn’t measure my angles and my shape is a bit wonky.

This green is one of the samples we got when we were picking exterior trim for our house. I keep the samples around for crafts like this.

After the green paint dried, I placed the frame on the cardboard to cut the excess. I hadn’t cut it until this point in order to have a place to set my paints and other supplies on either side and then scoot the whole thing out of the way when I wasn’t working on it.

I played with the layout of the numbers for a bit before I actually pinned them. I wanted to make sure that they all lined up well.

I made my tassels out of cotton twine that I had on hand, but you can easily buy ready-made tassels. I also cut out the circles from some card stock I had on hand, but have seen similar for sale at craft stores. I had all of the materials, but I provided estimates below. The hardest part about this project to me, was arranging the circles to ensure they would all fit in a neat manner. You can make this to fit any style by switching out the frame and paint colors or tassels!

Thanks for reading! Do you have a traditional advent calendar? I'd love to hear all about it in the comments!

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