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How to: Make Your Own Advent Calendar with Free Christmas Crafts

Posted by Caley on November 25th, 2009 at 02:31pm

One of my favorite themes for free Christmas crafts is advent calendars. After Thanksgiving, advent calendars count down to Christmas and often provide little treats to make the wait a bit more bearable. Do you remember when those last few weeks before Christmas were almost unbearable in your excitement? When you really had to fight the urge to look for your Christmasas presents? When I was a kid, an advent calendar always helped distract me from spoiling my Christmas surprises. The weekend after Thanksgiving, my family’s tradition was to use free Christmas crafts to make and embellish our own advent caledars. Then, my mom would fill the calendars with candy and other small treats for our December countdown.

Some of the best free Christmas crafts are the simplest. For one idea, gather 24 small boxes. Recycle old jewelry boxes, plastic tubs and metal mint or tea tins from around your home. Now comes the fun part. Paint half the boxes green and half the boxes red. Kids can help paint and embellish with stamps, markers, stickers, felt, glitter and ribbon. Use white paint, felt or paper to add the numbers 1-24 to the top of the boxes. For another cute idea for this craft perfect for kids, you can print out two copies of “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and cut one copy into 24 parts (cut out 2 lines for each with larger part left for Christmas Eve) . Glue the lines into the inside of the boxes or fold the paper and slip into the box along with the treats. Read the entire poem on Christmas Eve.

For a variation on the boxes idea, gather 24 envelopes for a hanging advent calendar and use free christmas crafts for cards, scrapbook and other papercrafts to embellish the envelopes. You can use any size envelope, but only the back of the envelope will show. Fold back and glue the envelope flap or cut cleanly off with a craft knife to create a pocket. Cover the remaining V-shape of the envelope back with holiday paper, paints, stamps and other embellishments. You can select three scrapbook papers and alernate covering the envelopes. Glue a solid piece of paper inside the envelope as an insert covering any white.

Once the envelopes are done, add the numbers 1-24 with paint or felt. If you can find tiny wooden signs at the craft store, use these to add numbers to your advent pockets. Once complete, find a large piece of cardboard, poster board or canvas board. Lay out the envelopes in 6 rows of 4 envelopes. Measure and mark a one inch border around the envelopes and cut out the poster board. Remove the envelopes and cover your background with Christmas fabric, tightly securing at the back with pins or adhesive. Arrange and glue your advent pockets. Fill with treats. Create a hanger for your advent calendar from ribbon or ric-rac. Voila!

Wreaths are certainly one of the most popular free Christmas crafts and luckily they are great for advent calendars too. You can easily make your own advent calendar by gluing peppermints, candy canes, green and red Hershey kisses or other candies to a foam wreath base. People cane remove a candy each day until Christmas. Make sure to wrap the wreath base in holiday fabric so that the wreath does not look bad when the candies are removed.

Peppermint Sweats Wreath

For a more advanced advent calendar wreath, glue 24 metal tins to a large wreath base. Paint in holiday colors and add the numbers 1-24. Embellish the treat with fabric, ribbons, garland and/or green tissue paper. Fill the tins with candies and other small treats.