The build-up to Christmas is half the fun of the holidays, and we all know the best way to track it is with an advent calendar! An advent calendar helps you count down the days and also rewards you with sweet treats and little gifts to get you in the Christmas spirit.
Instead of buying another typical, shop-bought advent calendar you pick up every year, give our cute DIY version a go. This will be a fun activity for the family, and our wooden design means you can reuse it year after year.
If you’re ready to make this year’s celebrations more special than ever, read on and learn how to make an advent calendar of your very own in 7 simple steps.
How To Make Your Own Advent Calendar
Supplies
To make your own advent calendar, you will need:
- - Wooden advent tree
- - Christmas Pad
- - Sprout card toppers
- - Dippy card toppers
- - Advent numbers
- - Sausage dog card toppers
- - Dex the dinosaur wooden toppers
- - Sticky dots
- - PVA glue
- - Scissors
- - A pencil
Instructions
Step One
Before you can get crafting, you need to first choose a couple of designs from your Christmas paper pad that you’d like to include on your advent calendar. For our example, we went for two different sheets.
Step Two
The next step is to create the outline of the drawer fronts. As a guide, draw around one of the drawers from your wooden advent onto your patterned paper. Repeat this process until you have 12 neatly drawn squares.
Step Three
Then, carefully cut out all your squares and stick them down to 12 of your drawer fronts using PVA glue.
Step Four
While the glue is drying, it’s the perfect time to decorate the rest of the drawers! This time around, instead of using patterned paper, we’re going to use 12 card topper characters and stick them down using the sticky glue dots. For our calendar, we picked 3 of each character.
Step Five
As you know, any good advent calendar needs the days of December on it. So, for this step, take your wooden numbers and place 1-24 on each drawer front, either next to your card topper character, or on top of the paper-covered drawer.
Step Six
Once the glue has dried, place all your drawers into the advent calendar, making sure to mix up the dates so they’re not too easy to find!
Step Seven
Lastly, fill your beautifully decorated advent calendar with little trinkets, sweets, and toys to make every day in the run-up to Christmas extra special.
How to Paint Your Own Advent Calendar
Step One
Draw Dex's features onto the wooden advent calendar using a pencil. You can follow the outline in the video above.
Step Two
Following the pencil outlines, paint in the details of Dex. Stay true to Dex's colours or go wild and paint him whatever colour(s) you like!
Don't forget to get creative and add in some winter and Christmas elements, such as a scarf, hat, and snowflakes.
Step Three
Once dry, stick your numbers onto each door. You can stick them in order or mix it up to make it fun for your kids to hunt for each morning.
Wrapping it up
If you love the build-up to Christmas, then you know a good advent calendar is a must. This year, instead of throwing a shop-bought advent calendar into your trolley at the supermarket, why not have a go at creating your own?
With our 7 simple steps, you can design and decorate your very own DIY advent calendars that can be re-used each year, while giving you the freedom to choose which sweet treats and gifts your loved ones receive.
The fun doesn’t have to stop there! We have plenty of other Christmas DIY guides to help you make:
