Advent Calendar That Makes Me Smile

I got this advent calendar tree from Ben Franklin this weekend and started working on it right away.  Odd thing is it only has 24 boxes.  I thought most advent calendars have 25 days.  Oh, well, no big deal.  I covered the back, sides and fronts of the individual drawers with different patterned paper and Elmer's glue.  I used a sponge brush and brushed the glue on to coat the entire paper surface.  Brushing the glue evenly gave full coverage on the paper so there was no puckering or paper lifting off.  The glue also gave me some wiggle room to manipulate the paper before it dried completely.  I think using tape for this would have been a more difficult.  I cut out numbers from an old QuicKutz set (thanks Jenny) and glued them on.  The embellishments I used are gemstone brads and stickers.  I punched a hole in the boxes to secure the brads.  I added Tombow Mono Multi Glue (green & white bottle) to the stickers to give them some extra security since the drawers will be opened and closed a lot.  

Here's a close-up

The most time consuming parts of this project were cutting the numbers and figuring out the layout.  If you can find number stickers that would probably save you some time.  Overall, this project was simple and I was able to complete it in 2 days.  I will give this to my 5-year-old twin nieces and hope they have fun counting down to Christmas!

Thanks for stopping by!