Chatty Crafters: DIY Advent Calendar

One of my favorite projects from last year was making a DIY Advent Calendar for the holiday season. It was super affordable and really tested the limits of my gift giving ability to come up with so many mini gifts!

The 12-day DIY advent calendar I made.

Below is the most recent episode of my podcast, Chatty Crafters, where I talked about my process. You can listen below, on Podbean, or easily find it under my website on my audio podcast page! The transcript of the audio can also be found below. Happy crafting!

Transcript

Hi Craft Collective and welcome to Chatty Crafters! I'm your host and owner of the Craft Collective, Nicole. Today, we'll be talking about creative holiday gifts that can be super affordable to make - a DIY advent calendar. I'll talk through my process, the supplies, and why I loved making this gift.

The reason I wanted to do this gift was because I kept on seeing unboxing videos of advent calendars on TikTok, and I thought that was such a fun idea that could be easily made, but with a personalized touch for the recipient. You can buy premade empty advent calendars, but I didn't want to spend the money on that, and I thought it would be more fun to completely DIY it.

So, the first step I did was coming up with the gifts, because they had to be small enough to fit into their holders, which were going to be red solo cups, but I'll get to that later. So first I decided I was only going to do a 12 day advent calendar. Advent calendars can be 12 or 24, but I went with 12 because it seemed more manageable. And also, my recipient, my boyfriend John, we had just started dating a couple months prior, so I didn't want to go too overboard with the gifts. They kind of fell into three categories, I noticed.

So first I started with snacks that I know he likes. So goldfish, Kit Kats, Yorks. Second, there were some practical items thrown in there that I just knew he needed more of, like gum and chapstick. And then, lastly, was the sentimental category. This is what I had most fun with. So, I found silly toys that reminded me of him. So for example, he really likes Power Rangers, so I found these little Power Rangers squishies. I also made some mini crafts that are more sentimental to our relationship. So, a plastic ornament with our names and the year on it, and I also handmade one of those lanyard keychains - throwback to summer camp.

So now that I had all of my gifts, I now had to make the board to put it in. So to do this, I took an old piece of cardboard and painted it white, so it was a nice pretty background. I then took those red solo cups that I mentioned earlier, and I made a grid of four across three down, so it was the total of 12 and hot glued the base of the cup to the cardboard. I then started filling each cup with their corresponding gift. I tried to kind of mix it up so not all the snacks were back to back, that it was a little bit varied each day.

Once they were filled, I then took tissue paper to cover it because tissue paper is really easy to punch through. So, I started with a base of white tissue paper and then added another layer of the more fun decorative color. So red, green or I had a Christmas tree pattern, then just took some rubber bands, rubber band the tissue paper to the lip of the cup. And then there you go. You have your finished advent calendar, at least the base. It's super easy for someone to punch through the tissue paper, and then I just added some decorative elements at the top, like I made a title called the 12 Days of Christmas.

So for the supplies that I had to buy, like the red solo cups and a lot of the gifts I didn't have to make, like the lanyard I had that material already, but for pretty much everything else, I had to buy it. To keep this affordable, I sourced almost everything from the dollar store. So roughly I spent under 20 bucks for the entire project.

Now, this project I thought was so much fun because it really tested my creativity of how much I know the recipient. Coming up with 12 mini gifts for them. It really challenged me to think creatively of what I can make? What can I buy that they're going to love? And you can also do those silly gifts that he doesn't need little Power Ranger squishy things. But they were fun and they showed that I cared about him.

So that has it. That is how I made my DIY advent calendar. If you have any questions, drop them down below. I would love to answer them. And if you've made one of a DIY advent calendar yourself, what is a gift that you've put in there that you thought was really great and creative? Until next time, I'll see you later! Happy crafting!