DIY Advent Calendar {Creative Team Post}

Well hello again -It’s Lidia from Design Inside the Box!  I’m so honoured and happy to be back here at “DIY Passion” – a big thank you to the awesome, talented and fabulous Erin for having me!  This week I’m showing you how to make a DIY Advent Calendar that’s a bit different from the others you’ve seen. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

DIY Advent Calendar “Santa’s Message in a Bottle!”

Advent Calendar. If you type those words into Pinterest you will be inundated with all sorts of ideas on how to make one and generally they’re catered towards the kiddos in your life. While originally I was going to do one for my hubby and one for my 3 year old, she found (and LOVED) a Play-Doh advent calendar that I just couldn’t figure out how to compete with. (Side note, we’ve already dived right into that calendar and it’s November!)

So this advent calendar was made with my hubby in mind! I call it “Santa’s message in a bottle” 🙂

The idea was to write up a clue a day that, if my hubby solved correctly, would reward him with a craft beer, something he really enjoys! (For me, it would be chocolate. And cheese. And chips. And Caesars. Is jewellery too much?!)

Here are the materials I used: (affiliate links)

• A Galvanized Bucket
• 24 Mini Bottles
• Thin Metallic Ribbon
• Burlap Ribbon (for decoration)
• Number Stickers
• Clear Tape
• 24 Craft Beers!  (Or whatever your little gifts will be!)

The first thing I did was come up with the clues for each bottle but there’s one important thing to note: measure the length of the bottle first as that will dictate the length of the message you can add into your bottle. Mine were 2.5 inches long (The width doesn’t matter as you’ll be rolling up each message). I then printed each clue on regular printer paper as I needed them to be pliable enough to fit into each little bottle opening.

Next up is start rolling each message and applying a tiny piece of clear tape to seal it shut. Then take a piece of your thin metallic ribbon and also apply that to your newly rolled up clue. You’ll want this piece of ribbon attached to each message, otherwise it will be impossible to get the message out of the bottle!

Repeat this process 24 times. Watching an episode of “Real Housewives” really helps the time fly with this step 🙂

I love stickers so this next step was fun – apply your number stickers to each of the bottles:

And then add in your 24 little messages! (Don’t they look like little champagne bottles?!)

I used a galvanized bucket I purchased at Michaels as the bottle holder because it so fit the theme of this advent calendar – you get a 2-4 of delicious beer at the end of it after all!  So I took the bucket, added some burlap ribbon to tie in the colour of the cork tops of the little bottles and then put it all together with some festive decorative touches.

 

 

 

 

I think my hubby is already really excited about this as I’ve caught him snooping around this project! 😉

Stick around and check out a few more posts I think you’d like!