Opening an advent calendar for a daily treat is one of the funnest ways to build up excitement before Christmas. If you’re sick of the average-quality chocolate from generic store-bought advent calendars, have a look at this fantastic creative ideas to create your own. What you fill it with is entirely your choice – whether it be chocolate or something else entirely.
Garland Advent Calendars
Why not create your advent calendar in the style of a garland – an easy and practical way to add Christmas flair in the house.
For this idea, you’ll need:
- Craft pegs, decorated with numbers 1 – 25 (you may write these on, purchase glitter or wooden numbers and glue them on, print them, etc. Or, place the numbers on the advent gift holder itself
- Thick twine, rope, or fairy lights as the base of the garland.
Gift holder ideas:
- Small mittens
- Green, red, white, striped and polkadotted socks
- Small paper coffee cups, decorated as Christmas reindeer with googly eyes, pipe cleaners and red buttons
- Gift bags
- Festive coloured paper cones
A Notice or Magnet Board
For this advent calendar, grab a spare noticeboard or magnet board from around the house (or at your local reject shop). Find one that works with your Christmas decor style – we love refurbishing old vintage frames and using them to border the board. Use thumbtacks or magnets to keep the gift holders in place.
Gift holder ideas:
- Small gift envelopes, decorated in theme with your decor
- Toilet roll holders, glued together at the bottom edge, painted white with a stencilled snowflake
- Small felt pouches (simply cut rectangles of the same size in different fabrics, and glue or sew three edges together).
- Magnetic spice holders
Christmas Tree Forest
Make a statement with this adorable Christmas Tree Forest advent calendar. Use different shades of green and patterned papers, and create conical trees using the template available here which you can fill with treats to open each day.
Lucky Dip Bowl Advent Calendar
Collect 25 large matchboxes and decorate either with paint or different scrapbooking paper, adding the numbers 1-25 on each. Fill a large fish-bowl style vase with the matchboxes – what a cute decoration!
Matchbox Christmas Tree Advent Calendar
Similarly to the Lucky Dip Bowl, decorate 25 matchboxes in festive Christmas style. For the next step, you’ll need a hot glue gun. Stack the matchboxes in the shape of a Christmas tree, with numbers randomised.
This will be 10 rows high (the bottom two rows with two boxes across each, the 3rd and 4th from the bottom will have four across each, the middle two rows will have three boxes across, the top 3rd and 4th will have two across, and the top two rows will have one box each).
Glue these together in this shape, connecting the long edge sides of the matchboxes with the hot glue gun. These boxes still be able to slide out, so fill them with treats and enjoy each day!
Hanging Branch Advent Calendar
This option is great for more contemporary style homes and decor themes – especially the Christmas by the Sea (LINK TO THEME). Arranging branches in vases, much like a floral arrangement, has been a popular decorating trend for a few years now (we think they look gorgeous strewn with copper seed lights LINK). But have you considered using this as the foundation of your advent calendar?
Make sure you have quite a large and sturdy arrangement of branches, or perhaps use a large plant you already have in your home (that isn’t quite your Christmas tree!)
Gift holder ideas:
- Make small origami boxes from different Christmas themed papers
- Hang small chinese takeaway containers
- Wrap the advent gifts in plain brown paper, decorate with the day number, and hang with twine
- Hang small plant pots filled with treated (we love rustic silver ones)
- Make waffle-cone shaped holders from different paper and hang with decorative ribbons