Advent Calendar

I was putting away my Advent Calendar and decided to take some pictures of it to hopefully inspire someone else to create their own.    Mine is made of simple wooden slats - I used the hearts to hide the nails that hold the whole thing together.  The gold hanging points are simply gold thumb tacks.  All the numbers are pre-cut wooden numbers I got from the craft store.  And my Advent ends on Christmas Eve so we can put up the last piece as part of our Christmas Eve Celebration.

Fully decorated it looks pretty impressive - and the kids love putting up the ornaments for each day.

Yes, I did make all the ornaments. 

They are painted, hand made, salt dough ornaments put on pre-cut wooden shapes that I painted fun colors.    A piece of ribbon is glued to the back of each to form a loop to hook on the thumbtack.  I used the old fashioned recipe for salt dough of one part salt to two parts flour and then just added water till it felt right.  Baked slowly in a 275 - 300 degree oven to keep them from cracking.  Some still do crack but you have a better chance at the lower temperatures.

You can do them with pre-colored clays - like Fimo but then you wouldn't have the fun of painting them.  And if you are someone who is into natural colors then you can leave everything natural and just seal the ornaments and decorate with raffia or whatever suits your taste.

The fur on the lamb, green on trees and wreaths, straw in the manger and the hair on any character are done with a garlic press.

All the faces and marking are done with a very fine permanent marker. 

The biggest challenge was sealing the works so that they would last for years.  I used a product that no longer exists called Joli Glaze.  If anyone knows of a substitute product just let me know I would gladly pass on the information. 

If you are considering doing this I have one suggestion - put the numbers for the days so that they alternate from side to side of the tree (bottom row would be 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 6, 4, 2) - not in straight numerical order (1, 2, 3, 4  . . .) - because the tree gets so heavy on one side with all the numbers this way.  I finally have taken to using museum putty to hold it to the wall.  Live and Learn :) 

Enjoy!