Advent Calendar

I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about my beautiful advent calendars yet. It’s a little late, but I had to get this on my blog! This past Christmas I got the urge to make advent calendars as my Christmas gifts. And as some people read this, they may be disappointed that I did not gift them one of these. I’m SO sorry (annie)! My hands couldn’t take it anymore and I had to stop making them at a certain number. And I had to get them out by December 1 as they are advents for Christmas. I promise to gift you something nice this coming December. I already know what my 2010 Christmas project will be. For sure I will start a little earlier this year than last. I think I am straying away from my Ghetto Martha nickname! This is a GOOD thing.

I started my calendar by cutting Christmas themed shapes for my pockets. This took the most time. I am pretty proud of myself for cutting all these free hand! Then I embellished most of the cut outs. I cut 300 shapes. It was very tedious but I enjoyed almost every moment of it. Gluing on the fuzzies and ropes and pom poms was the most fun. By the time I got to cutting squares I got pretty lazy and none of them are the same size or even square. More like half square, half rectangle, half parallelogram. (oh wait that doesn’t equal 1). When it got to gluing on the pockets to the big sheet of soft felt like fabric, I was pretty drained and didn’t want to finish. But I made myself glue on the 300 pockets. Then the best part…gluing on the ribbon border and the hanging rope. Because that meant COMPLETE! Hallelujah! Amen! Oh wait...not complete. Then i had to puffy paint the numbers on each pocket. Sigh.









But what goes INSIDE the calendar!? I had many ideas, but I had to keep the cost down and had to keep in mind that I had a time limit.

I made 2 things with these flat marbles. I bought a bag of mixed marbles with purple and clear. With the clear ones I made picture magnets. You glue a small picture on the flat side, and then a magnet. Very simple! I used NOT Martha's instructions. (I don't have pictures of these. I forgot to take one.) With the purple marbles I made picture/note holders. I used very thick jewelry wire and plyers to make the holder part. For the smaller picture holders I just glued 3 marbles together. For the larger ones, I cut out cubes of styrofoam, covered it with black fabric (because I had some scraps), and then glued the marbles on. I ended up using the smaller ones only and was left with a ton of large ones that I broke apart later on.

Then I made wine charms. I used earring hoops and swarovski crystal beads. The beads are pretty cheap. This is a great alternative to buying expensive wine charms.

And then upon Michi's suggestion, I went crazy with shrinky dinks! I made book marks and luggage tags. I don't have a picture of the luggage tags. The luggage tags were flowers and hello kitties. (Although, I don't think anyone knew what these were. I was getting pictures on my BBM of people hanging them on their Christmas Trees. LOL)

This hello kitty book mark was a test to see how small the shrinky dinks got!

All my bookmarks were sweet treats with everyone's favorite dessert. On it I wrote "Reading is sweet and so are you." I'm glad I learned to color in kindergarden.

for the rest of the pockets, I filled it with different asian candies, european chocolates, and random other candy. On the 25th santa bag I included a 50 cent christmas puzzle I found at Wal Mart. I love you Wal Mart.

Finally I rolled them up with ribbon and shipped them off. Merry Christmas!