Advent calender

Every year I exchange advent calenders with my friend Trude. This year I wanted to make a calender that we can use again in the next years as well. I was inspired by the matchbox calenders so many have made this year. But realised that my gifts to her would never fit in those tiny drawers. So I made my own version instead. I used bigger sized matchboxes. On top of it I made a box were the bigger gifts will go. On some days Trude will find a note in her drawer telling her to "go fish", and then she can choose a present from the box. On Christmas Eve I wanted something special, so that gift will be in the paperbag on top of the lid on the box. The paperbag was part of the Advent calender she made for me last year. So I wanted to incorporate it in some way. Since I had already used 24 boxes, I converted one of them into one bigger drawer to make room for a bigger gift and ending up with 23 drawers instead.

On the inside all the drawers are painted with gold paint. The nob is a brad, and on the inside I covered that side of the drawer with bookbindingtape. Then I painted the whole inside with gold paint.

I had so much fun playing with dimentions on this project. Normally I cannot be this 3D on my scrapbookpages, so I wanted to really go to town with my embellishments on this. I used styrofoam balls and a heart that I painted in gold and embellished with stickles and sequins. I used the angel from a PP from 3ndy on the paperbag and used Stickles on that too. On the back of the back I glued angel wings. And I also used white feathers throughout on other details as well.

The patterned papers I have used comes from MME, MM, 3ndy, Melissa Frances, Anna Griffin and Basic Gray. I had so much fun creating this for Trude. Now I really hope that she will like it too!