Holiday Advent Calendar

Hello Friends,

I was wondering through Target about a week ago and spotted this wood Advent calendar in the Dollar Spot (for $5 of course). I loved the wood tags with the big numbers so I decided to grab it and see what I could do to transform it into my vintage style. 

I started with the house.  

Our Christmas Backdrops paper has a brick wall image that will be perfect for the chimney.  I used my Tonic Precision Trimmer to cut the paper. I love how smooth it is and the fact that the "arm" has a spring-lift, so it is always at the ready to accept the paper. No more flipping the arm up and down like my old trimmer.

Add the paper to the chimney with Collage Medium.

Cut more patterned paper for the body of the house.

I decided that it would be easier to punch a hole in a small piece of paper (the hole is for the hook) and add it to the house individually rather than trying to match up a larger piece of paper. 

See what I mean? I only had to guess at where the hole should be and shimmy the paper to fit, then cut away the excess that hung over the edges.  From here, I can build around these two squares.

You might notice that I also painted the eaves black and added paper to the roof line. Painting it black helped to disguise any bad cuts along that diagonal edge.

Here it is with all the paper filled in.  As you can see, any configuration will work! I added a layer of Collage Medium over the paper to seal.

NOTE: If I was using another substrate, I would have drilled the holes, added the paper and then added each hook.  That would be easier than navigating the hooks.

Once the Collage Medium was dry, then add Distress Crayon over the seams to give the paper more depth.

I wanted to use one of the Festive Marquee word strips but I wanted it raised from the house.  I thought Etcetera Trims would work to do just that! I use the Sizzix Decorative Trims die to cut 2 matching shapes from red plaid paper then added them to the Scallop Trims with Collage Medium (the bottom two pieces in this photo)

I added the two pieces to the House with Collage Medium.

The connection point will not show too much in the end.

I also added pieces from the Christmas Layers Pack to the front of the house.

I decided I wanted a solid background behind the Festive Marquee so I painted another piece of trim (this is the narrower version of the scallop I used earlier) and added it right above the previous trim.

So now to paint the Festive Marquee.  I painted both phrases just to see which one I liked better for this project.  The red is Candied Apple and the green is Rustic Wilderness Distress Paint.  It really does not take long to dry (especially if you are impatient and use a heat tool).  Once it was dry, I rubbed the paint with steel wool to get the perfect aged appearance.

I decided on the green but both worked really well with the patterned paper. I used Collage Medium to add the Festive Marquee, leaving it to dry for about an hour while I cleaned up my work table.

Adding a splatter of white paint over the house really made the colors pop and of course, looked like snow!

While I waited for the paint to dry, I painted 2 holly leaves and 1 poinsettia (Christmas Adornments pack) to add to the Trim piece. I LOVE this holly!

On the left side, I added the poinsettia, then chose to add paper holly from the Christmas Layers pack...leaving them to dry while I worked on the numbers.

The package came with these wood tags. Just for reference, they are about 2 1/8 x 5" long.

I decided to stamp on the wood, but was unsure if the ink would bleed, since some wood is very porous (especially cheap wood).  I knew I could seal the wood with Collage Medium to counteract any bleeding, but this would force me to use StazOn Ink over the sealed surface. Not a problem at all, as I have StazOn in my stash for stamping on transparencies. 

So I gathered the supplies I needed for the task, using StazOn ink in Blazing Red.

It worked perfectly! The wood tags fit under the large background stamp!

The polka dots look so good!

The last thing I did was to add Grit Paste Snowfall to the Adornments and Festive Marquee. Super easy to just wipe it on with your fingertip, then just leave to dry.

I kist love how it turned out!  Thank you Target for a fun substrate to decorate for the holiday season!

On a side note...if you wanted to make your own numbered tags, I would suggest the CMS161 Numeric stamp set for the numbers. The numbers on that set measure 3 1/4" tall.  Taller than the Target numbers, but they would still fit on a wood tag of this size.

And...after a quick search on Amazon, I can see there are lots of wood tags available.  Here is a link to one that is the same size as the Target tags (2 1/8 x 5"). I am sure there are plenty of the tags to choose from in the size you would need depending on your substrate.  I would also venture to bet that your local craft store might have some too! 

 

Now carry on...

paula