Make your own glittery advent calendar! I love making an advent calendar every year it's become a bit of tradition here, I enjoy the puzzle of working out how to fit 24 pieces into it and deciding what to make it from!
This year, I had an idea, to make something that had pieces that tessellated and could be turned around to create a festive scene- as with many ideas I have, it kind of ran away with me and ended up being a bit of a glittery rainbow explosion and I'm not sorry about it!
This advent calendar features 24 pieces of felt, customised with iron-on vinyl, that hang from hooks and are turned over each day to decorate the Christmas tree! You can of course personalise the tree with decorations that mean more to you (I went for unicorns and pizza!).
YOU WILL NEED:
-Cricut Maker or Explore Air 2
-Cricut Easy Press Mini (or any Easy Press)
-Coloured Felt
-Cotton Canvas or banner
-Gold, Green and Red Glitter iron-on
-Blue, Red, Pink, Yellow, Lilac and Green Iron-on (you can, of course, use whatever colours you have to hand!)
-Bauble hooks or wire
-White cord
-Coloured pom poms
-Coloured wool
-Glue Gun
-Dowel
-Hole Punch
FIND THE FULL PROJECT HERE:
STEP ONE:
Open up my project in Cricut Design Space, Edit any pieces you want to change now and resize to fit your backing piece.
STEP TWO:
Next head to make it, First cut the felt rectangles. Lay a sheet of felt onto the mat (I use the pink mat) and load into the machine, if using the Maker I edit tools and pop my rotary blade in instead of the fine point blade as I prefer the cut with felt.
Continue loading the sheets into the machine until all of the felt rectangles have cut.
STEP THREE:
Next, cut the iron-on, use the mat screen as a guide as to which colour to load in. Make sure that you have mirrored all of the iron-on mats.
Pop your iron-on face down onto the mat.
Choose the iron-on setting for the iron on your are cutting, and load the mat into the machine.
Continue cutting until all of the pieces are cut. Then start weeding the designs, so that you remove all of the parts and only the design is left on the carrier sheet.
Cut around each image so that they are all separate pieces ready to be pressed.
STEP FOUR:
Next take all of the green glittery tree pieces, Lay them out on top of the felt pieces. You should have two pieces for each square of felt, one for each side.
Use your easy press to press the glittery tree pieces on both sides of the felt.
STEP FIVE:
Next, take the glittery Iron on numbers and press them onto one side of the felt rectangles. using your easy press.
Normally I say not to layer anything on top of glitter iron-on, the only exception to this rule is when you are making something you aren't going to wash or give a lot of wear to.
STEP SIX:
No turn over the felt pieces, then press the decorations onto the pieces, use the image in DS as your guide. These images come in two layers, so make sure to press the first layer, then wait for it to cool before you remove the carrier sheet and press the next layer.
STEP SEVEN:
Next press half of the stars onto the tree, placing them randomly around the decorations to make this side of the tree extra sparkly. Remember to cover any layers you have already pressed with baking parchment to protect them.
Use a hole punch to add a little hold at the top centre of each piece, so that you can hang them later!
STEP EIGHT:
It's now time to add the hooks to your backing piece. I used bauble hooks, but you could use short lengths of wire. Glue the flat end to the backing with a blob of glue gun glue, letting the hook hang down. Use the pieces of felt to measure where the hooks need to go. Start at the bottom and work upwards making sure all o the felt pieces will touch.
I then added an iron-on star to cover the blob of glue.
STEP NINE:
Next, glue your cord to your backing piece so that you can hang your advent calendar and if needed glue a piece of dowel to the top back of the piece so that it hangs flat to the wall.
STEP TEN:
To finish, add wool to the bottom of the calendar. I added a strip of glue then lay pieces of wool onto it. These can then be trimmed to your desired shape.
Add as many pom-poms as you like to the hanging cord. You can't go wrong with pom poms!
You can now hang up our calendar and enjoy it over December! start with all of the pieces showing the numbers then turn over the pieces daily to reveal the decorated tree!
