At each of the monthly SWI (Scottish Women's Institute) meetings, there are two competitions - made by member (MBM) and pick-up (PU). For December (2017), the MBM was an Advent Calendar.
I had a few ideas for what I wanted to do for my advent calendar (e.g. use toilet roll tubes and have drawers with different activities/crafts each day) but I wasn't sure how to put it all together.
Eventually, after a lot of discussion, I chose to use cardboard (from some cardboard boxes) to construct my advent calendar. I also decided to make the calendar in a sort of book form using the cardboard from a bedsheet.
I started by measuring the cardboard for the "cover", to find out how much space I had for each door. I wanted to have 25 doors as advent calendars usually only have 24 doors and I get disappointed on Christmas Day when I don't have another door to open - but maybe that's just me?
After measuring everything and working out how I was going to make the "grid" for each side of the "book", I had to measure and cut 99 pieces of cardboard - so, including the "cover", there are 100 pieces of cardboard in my advent calendar!
I then used my glue gun to put together the two grids and the part for the 25th door. Before I could attach them to the "cover" though, I had to cover the "cover" so that it wasn't just plain cardboard - I decided to use self-adhesive sparkly blue 'PVC film'. I also had to decide what I was going to do for the background of the grids, the back/inside of the doors, the daily activities/crafts and the overall design for the calendar.
For the backgrounds of the grids, I thought about using Christmas song/carol titles so that you would spend each day with a different song/carol stuck in your head. However, after discussing it with my family, I decided to make a game out of it by only using part of the lyrics so you have to guess which song it is from and then on the 25th there is a scroll with all the answers on it. I think this is a really fun idea and, thanks to my terrible memory, I can't remember which songs I used, so I can still enjoy the game even though I'm the one who chose the songs!
I remember having an advent calendar one year which had Christmas jokes on the inside of each of the doors and I really liked this idea. So I researched as many Christmas jokes as I could find - I think I read about 150 jokes most of which were the same handful or a slight variation of them. Eventually though, I found the 25 jokes I wanted to use.
For the daily activities and crafts, I found a few different "Christmas Bucket Lists" and chose the things I wanted to do e.g. make paper snowflakes, help decorate the house/tree, help wrap presents, bake gingerbread biscuits, start a new tradition, etc.
The overall design for the calendar probably took me the longest (2nd only to the amount of time it took me to measure and cut the cardboard!). I knew I wanted to have a fun Christmassy theme/look and after some discussion, I decided to paint each door to look like a gingerbread house with either a red or a green door. The 25th door was taller and much thinner than the other doors so I decided to do a Narnia-style lamppost instead. I took all the doors out and spray-painted the grids silver to make them look sort of icy/wintery.
By this point I was running out of time before the meeting so I typed and printed the backgrounds, jokes and activities and used the guillotine to cut them to the correct sizes. For the door 'handles' I used a paper fastener/split pin pushed through the cardboard. I then attached the joke to the door which also helped keep the fasteners in place. I used my glue gun to attach the grids to the lyric backgrounds and then to the inside of the book cover. To make it easier to get the activity cards in and out, I folded a corner on each one. I tried to link some of the activities with the lyrics behind them but couldn't do this with all of them.
In order to keep the advent calendar closed when not in use, I got three pieces of thin ribbon (two white, one red) and plaited them. I then attached one end of the plait to the advent calendar by wrapping it around the head of the paper fastener/split pin on the front cover and then taking the other end across the opening and wrapping it around the fastener on the back cover.
I'd love to hear any feedback you have in the comments below. I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year - all the best for 2018!
