The advent calendar – part 2

Advent Calendar

In an earlier post, I started working on the wooden advent calendar that had been sitting in my craft room all year.

I dawdled and delayed working on the individual boxes, but the countdown has really begun, if only in my own mind, and this advent calendar must be ready to be used this year. A promise is a promise! The fun part is painting different Christmas themed objects on the front of the boxes, and now that I am in this stage of work, I am more relaxed and enjoying myself.

I had originally painted the boxes white and I had colour coded the drawer knobs only, but I found the appearance of the tree looked too bland.

The colour coding is needed to identify which of the three children will open a box each day starting on December 1.

Then I painted the entire box either blue, pink, or purple, the colour each child had chosen. But I really didn't like that effect at all; in fact, the calendar reminded me more of Easter than of Christmas.

So I am back to traditional, perhaps boring but safe, tree green. I made myself a list of objects to paint on each of the boxes, items such as a bell, a Christmas stocking, a candy cane and so on. These miniature paintings are definitely the most tedious part of the project.

Next step will be to add the numbers from 1 to 24. Finally, I will buy a special varnish to protect the paint and give it a nice finish.

My deadline? I would like to have this completed by November 20. I have too many other Christmas related crafts to get done.

Stay tuned. I will post the finished product if all goes according to plan!

Has your countdown begun? Have you started any projects or baking for Christmas? Happy crafting and baking! (I won't ask about shopping.... and I won't tell you how many days are left until Christmas!)