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Do It Yourself, Easy Christmas Advent Calendar

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Pinterest Guide how to make your own advent calendar cheap and easyI’ve always loved Advent Calendars. This craft started originally because I was looking for a unique advent calendar and couldn’t find something I really loved.  I went to a variety of stores and found big, bulky calendars. Then I found others that were really cute, but made so cheaply made that I was sure they wouldn’t survive a move, much less my rowdy bunch. I decided to look on ETSY, but didn’t find anything I was really in love with. Then this idea hit me.

I made a Halloween advent calendar earlier in October and the kids had the BEST time sharing and taking turns removing the magnets to discover the treat or note inside.  I filled them with all kinds of things, (go out for ice cream today) and (picnic at the park for dinner) and (game night tonight) and (popcorn movie night).. and also add stickers and treats.

First you’ll need to gather some supplies. Everything I bought came from Michaels Craft Store.

Make it yourself advent calendar easy craft for the kids christmas holidays

I bought the self sticky magnet rolls to make this a more cost effective project, but you can use magnet sheets as well. You’ll need a mini muffin tin, and a Marvy Uchida cutter (or similar to cover the gap of the muffin divet). My sister in law opted to use Pinking Shears to save more money after I sent her the Halloween version of this project. She couldn’t wait to make her Christmas magnets!

Next you’ll need to cut the magnet strips and paper. I made the strips as long as I could and made them to be about 2″ wide.  I wasn’t very exact with my cutting because I knew that it would be improved once I put it into the cutter.

Once the sheet or roll magnets have been cut, peel the back off and place the sticky part on the back of the paper you’re intending to use.  I cut the paper after I had the magnet on it… so now you should be left with strips of colored magnet strips (not pictured).

Next, feed the magnet paper into the cutter.  If you follow the directions of 2″ strips, the cutter will not make a complete scalloped square, only two sides will end up scalloped.

After you have the cut shapes, all you need to do is decorate! I grabbed a lot of different stickers and ended up making several sets as gifts for both sets of my nephews. The kids had a lot of fun helping put the stickers on.

I also ended up grabbing Christmas and Holiday buttons. I took a pair of wire cutters to cut the bottom of the buttons off and used double-sided sticky tape to adhere them to the magnet. It was a great way to get more a 3-dimensional look to the calendar.

How to attach buttons to projects with double sticky tape easily

 

Once all of the magnets have been decorated, I arranged them onto the muffin tin so that it looked good and then I grabbed a sharpie and numbered them for the days. I used a silver sharpie for the dark paper and a black sharpie for the lighter colored paper.

You could even do this project for various holidays or countdowns for family members visiting of military members coming home. Enjoy!

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