Cute and Easy DIY Holiday Advent Calendar

This advent calendar craft project works well if you have scraps of pretty Christmas paper that need to be used up. Or if you just want a reason to purchase a pad of colorful holiday patterned paper, this is an easy, DIY holiday craft project to fill your afternoon. (Or get together with your friends and have a craft night!)

You will need the following supplies:

• Twenty-five 2x2x2 inch party favor boxes. (I found mine here, in a pack of 50—some for you AND a friend—and there are color options if you don’t prefer the Kraft color.) 

• Elmers or similar glue.

• Rubber cement (not necessary but I prefer to use it when I want to avoid wrinkling.)

• Clear wrapping tape or other.

• Scissors and/or Exacto knife.

• Fancy bakers twine (can be found at most craft stores.)

• 5 different sheets of pretty holiday patterned paper.

• Numbers on squares printed on cardstock. Click or tap here for the free printable file.

• Black cardstock (you don’t need much, a scrap piece will do.)

• Something to put in the boxes.

1. Print the sheet with numbers on cardstock and cut them out. Here is the free printable file. (You’ll notice there are two pages to print. The second, is for step 2.)

2. Print the sheet with the cut marks on the back of all your patterned paper. Cut them out. If you have five different patterns, you’ll need to cut five squares out of each.

3. Lay out all your patterned squares in whatever arrangement is most pleasing to you (as seen above) and start glueing the numbers to them. This is where I like to use the rubber cement. 

TIP: If you brush rubber cement on BOTH surfaces that will be sticking to one another, let them dry, and then put them together, you won’t get any wrinkling. AND you can simply rub off any excess making it easy to get each edge and each corner totally glued down.

4. Now you can glue all your squares to the lid of each box. Again, I used rubber cement for this part.

5. Cut a 1 inch strip of your black paper. Then slice the strip into “tabs” as seen below, a little larger than 1/4 of an inch wide. You could skip this part, but I don’t recommend it. The tabs help get the lids open because they interlock with the side flaps making them difficult to open when the advent calendar is completely assembled.

6. Using Elmers glue, attach each little black tab to the lip of the lid as seen above. I used the white glue here because it has a strong bond once dry.

7. Now you need to start attaching these little gift boxes to one another. You'll find that using both glue and tape will give you the most secure, tight fit. Note: don’t use tape on the joints that will be showing on the outer edge of the final project. I also found it helpful to tape the bottoms of the boxes together too. You can use packing tape for this to get FULL coverage.

8. Wrap your fancy bakers twine around the whole thing. I recommend looping it around at least five times for a more pleasing look. IMPORTANT: If you're filling the advent calendar boxes with light weight items you can attach something as shown in the image below so it can be hung. 

Please note: My finished piece held 2 pounds of candy and when I lifted it by the hang string, the corner boxes couldn’t hold the weight. But it still looks great laid down or leaned up against the wall.

9. Now it’s time to fill your advent calendar with prizes, things to do, little notes, or candy...whatever! Then tuck those lids securely in.

If you choose to go the candy route...I highly recommend going to a bin store like WinCo or Food4Less etc. It’s an inexpensive option, and that way each box can have something different to try.

That’s it! You’re done. It’s really so simple and will turn out cute. It’s a good holiday craft project!