Christmas Advent 2025

 Hello and almost Happy New Year!  When my family gets together for Christmas, we always bring a gift and play the game Dirty Santa.  For the past three or four years I have created a gift to give for the game.  I love for someone to pick and open a gift that I have made.  This year I decided to make an Advent to give out of a wooden Advent calendar that I bought five years ago... LOL.  I actually had it in my donate pile, like a silly girl, because it's just been sitting in it's box in my craft room since I ordered it.  I guess I was just waiting for the right time to make it.  And the right idea.  Pardon the photo dump incoming. 

This is the original that I bought from Amazon.  

You can find it HERE

First, I sanded and painted all of the little drawers and wound up lining the inside bottoms with a soft flannel.  Mainly because the inside of the drawers needed sanding but were difficult to smooth out. 

I also painted the outside of the calendar in a maroon shade and painted Christmas flowers and such around the outside and on the borders of the drawer squares.  I wanted a sort of "Old World" painting theme.  Don't know if I achieved that or not but I really liked it.  I also sprayed the whole thing with a semi-gloss clear coat.

I knew I wanted a 3-d type scene of winter time, with trees and birds.  Here I've started the background.  I cut out trees from chipboard and also some snow banks.

I doubled the thickness of the trees, painted them and added snow.

I painted a couple trees on the background.

I made little ornaments for each day.  I made pinecones, birds and snowflakes from THIS air-dry paper clay that I LOVE using.  I also made a hole in the top of each one and added a little hook.

To give the trees depth I glued pieces of chipboard in triangles (standing of their side and painted) behind the trees.  I also used trimmed sewing pins for everything to hang on.  I used E6000 glue for each.  Hopefully they will stay in place!

And as always, sign your projects!

I had a lot of fun making this Advent!  And one of my nieces got to take it home with her!  I hope her family has lots of fun for many years putting ornaments on all through December!  

I also hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and wish tons of blessings for you in the New Year!

Let's create some stuff in 2026!

XOXO ~Laurie