Advent Calendar | Crate Paper

Hey Crate Paper fans, its Bea here with you today! Christmas prep is in full swing over here at Crate Paper blog and I have been so excited to share my new project using the adorable Snowflake collection with you!  Advent calendars are an age-old Christmas tradition that are fun for all ages. Every year, I create a design to put a fresh and fun spin on this classic concept. This year, I came up with this super easy and fun, shadowbox inspired DIY advent calendar. After you’ve assembled this design, fill each window with surprises to be unveiled every day of December.

First, here is a video, so you can see how works the advent calendar, and then the basic assembly of the shadow box and the decoration:

To create the base of the advent calendar, I turned two IKEA Lomviken frames into shadow boxes. Here in Europe, we count 24 days of the advent calendar, but if you need space for one more day, I recommend you to create a pretty paper box and place it next to the calendar.

The next step was to attach tiny paper doors to the tiny boxes. I cut and fold varied paper doors with a left to right or bottom to up openings. I used pom-poms or buttons to create tiny doorknobs.  

Since my children are not so young yet, I didn’t need to hide the surprises. I created paper pockets, vellum bags, and simple paper rings to hold the other presents.

To decorate the windows I used varied embellishments from the gorgeous Snowflake collection. I love the fact that in this collection, the light pink and blue colors coordinate beautifully with the traditional colors, and it’s super easy to mix and match the embellishments with the papers.   

The gorgeous chipboard stickers, ephemera pieces, paper clips, puffy stickers and pretty pine branches  made my advent calendar festive and unique.

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you like my advent calendar idea, and I could inspire you to create your own DIY calendar!

Supplies: Crate Paper – Snowflake: 12x12 Paper Pad (350976), 12 x 12 Chipboard Stickers (350979), Cardstock Stickers (350981), Clear Sticker Book (350983), Alpha (350977), Village (350967), Spruce (350972), Bundle (350961), Winterscape (350962), Snowcapped (350969), Very Merry (350970)