EPIC Fail - Advent Calendar!
November 22 2019 – Amber Crowell
Hi, it’s Cara here today with a fun Advent Calendar project for you! Ok, it’s not a complete epic fail… maybe calling it an epic fail is a bit much, because I can still use the advent calendar but it still did NOT turn out as I expected. I’ll chat about the ‘FAIL’ part in a bit, but let’s chat about the crafty parts first!
Using TN inserts as a guide I cut 4 pieces of patterned paper from the gorgeous Winter Farmhouse collection from Simple Stories and folded them in half into 4 booklets. The strips of paper that were left over just happened to be the same width as the inside of the match boxes I bought I so I cut them down to 24 little pieces and added one to each box to line the bottom. I glued the 24 matchboxes to the front covers and to the insides of each booklet to create the calendar.
I was careful to make sure to place the boxes strategically so that when the little booklets were closed the boxes alternated and didn’t touch, instead nested nicely so that the booklets would close up quite slim.
When I styled boxes close together, like in the photo below where I have 4 tucked together under this 3x4 card, I realised that I wasn’t able to pull open the boxes easily so I added cute little tabs cut from paper.
All the boxes got numbered using various sizes from the Numbers Sticker Tablet or from the countdown number in the Winter Farmhouse sticker tablet. I think the Numbers one is my all time favourite sticker tablet, the numbers are so versatile and there are ALWAYS colours that match the collection I am using.
Ok, so this calendar is cute, right? So why am I calling it an EPIC FAIL?
Because ALL of this this was supposed to fit into my Cream Dot Traveler's Notebook!! Each booklet was supposed to tuck into one of the TN's elastics, with a tea bag in each box so that I could keep it in my tea cupboard!
I honestly thought that all those match boxes would fit into my TN! I thought I was being so smart making sure that the boxes from one side alternated with the ones on the other side, to make it more slim, but only half of my 24 days actually fit… and I’m using the would ‘FIT’ lightly!
I am a very poor judge of what I can actually cram into to my TN, apparently! :D Even though, I can usually cram in quite a bit ;) I just didn’t realise how thick the match boxes were! I like my TNs chubby, but not this big.
Plus, there’s also the fact that the tea bags I was planning to add to each box don’t even fit… so yah, kind of an epic fail! At least it looks pretty!! That is why I have to stand them up on the mantle instead of adding them to my TN.
I’ve got a process video for this calendar coming to my YouTube channel on Monday so pop on over and you can not only get a better idea of how I constructed the calendar by seeing my process step by step. But you can also see my attempts to make it all fit!
SUPPIES:
