How to Make Your Very Own Advent Calendar

 

We are well and truly caught up in the festive spirit at Tindalls! This year we have decided to try our hand at some Christmas DIYs and will be blogging what we get up to.

Our first creation is an advent calendar that is super fun to make, especially as you can decorate it as you wish, which means you can personalise it towards specific people.

You Will Need

  1. 25 Empty Toilet Roll Tubes (or kitchen roll tubes cut in half)
  2. Acrylic/Poster Paint or Paint Pens
  3. Sheet of A3 Card
  4. String
  5. Strong Glue or Glue Gun
  6. Goodies to go inside!

Additional Items

  1. Ribbon
  2. Fabric
  3. Gem Stones
  4. Stickers
  5. Clay
  6. Washi Tape
  7. Pipe Cleaners

Decorating the Tubes

1. Colour in your toilet roll tubes – we chose to do 12 green, 12 red and 1 gold.

2. Close off the top and bottom of the tubes. Bend the edges inwards to create an almost pointed oval shape, the two edges can then overlap each other like a lid. Remember to put your goodies inside first!

Tindalls Top Tip: If you are putting particularly heavy items inside, make sure you glue the bottom of the tube together to stop anything falling out!

3. Time to decorate!

We chose to go for some fairly simple decorations and found it is a great way to use up scraps of material and craft supplies you may already have. We decorated the boxes in no particular order and numbered them as we went along.

For the numbers we needed two sheets of the Glitterations gold numbers. They also come in black and silver but we thought gold would stand out the most and add a nice touch of sparkle to the calendar. They are adhesive on the back so just need pulling off the plastic sheet they are on and sticking onto the tube. It is best to decorate your tube first and then add the number lastly.

We decorated some with plain or coloured string that was so simple to make, just use a coloured pen to add lines of colour along your white string.

We also used foam clay to make a candy cane and a Santa hat. For the candy cane make a line each of red and white clay. Lay them next to one another and twist them together and bend the top around into the candy cane shape. You could also use red and white pipe cleaners twisted together to make a candy cane.

Washi tape makes a really simple and effective decoration. We cut bits out in the shape of a Christmas tree. We thought that using colourful green washi tape made for a really beautiful Christmas tree, wonderfully bright.

Assembling your Calendar

Use a glue gun (or any strong glue) to stick down your tubes onto your backing card. We would recommend laying the tubes down, pencilling an outline before you glue and cutting the card down to size first.

Why not experiment with the layout? We chose to do five rows of five tubes but you could create a Christmas tree shape!

To finish off punch two holes in the top and thread some string through and you are ready to hang your calendar.

Share your creations!

#TindallsArt