Advent crafts Christmas Crafts for adults Cricut Maker

DIY re-useable wooden advent calendars

Cricut made Advent calendar

Last year my children asked for Advent calendars I just couldn’t find in the shops. They asked for a Pokemon and Minecraft Advent calendar. They’ve always enjoyed opening their Advent calendars and I didn’t want to disappoint them, especially as they still believe the Elf on the Shelf makes them for them. As we couldn’t buy the Advent calendars we wanted we decided to make our own re-useable advent calendars that could be used again. Our idea was for a simple wooden box frame with 24 little Advent bags hanging from three wooden dowels which would contain Pokemon toys for my daughter, and a Minecraft Lego set for my son.

Equipment to make re-useable wooden advent calendars:

Compound mitre saw

Planed pine wood

Pine dowel

Primer and satinwood white paint

Picture frame clamp and clamps

Wood glue

24 Curtain clips

24 small hessian bags

Cricut Maker and vinyl

DIY re-useable wooden advent calendars

We wanted to make our wooden Advent calendars free standing so planned the shape we wanted, a simple rectangular frame with space for 8 bags to hang on each line. We bought the wood and cut the pieces needed to make the frame using a compound mitre saw.

cutting wood with a mitre saw

The frame was really simple, with a larger piece at the top for each child’s name. We glued the frame together with wood glue and clamped it whilst it dried overnight using a picture frame clamp and clamps.

making a wooden advent calendar

With the basic frame made, we drilled six holes for the dowel using a drill bit the same size as the dowel.

making a wooden advent calendar

After a bit of filler in the gaps with wood filler and a quick sand, each frame was ready to be painted white.

finished advent calendar frame

Using my Cricut Maker I cut the children’s names from black everyday vinyl and applied it to the top of each frame.

using the cricut to personalise

I love this typeface and used it on a lot of my Christmas craft projects. Here’s how their personalised Advent calendars looked before the little bags were hung on each dowel.

using the cricut to personalise advent calendars

I used by Cricut Maker to cut a set of 24 numbers for each set of gift bags from glitter vinyl and used my Cricut Easy Press to press them onto the bags. This took a while and I wrote about this is more detail, which you can read about in this post.

Cricut made Advent gift bags

The last step was to fill the bags with the gifts I had bought my children before attaching the bags to the dowel using curtain clips. This meant the bags were easy to hang and remove by little fingers!

Cricut made Advent calendar

I really enjoyed this project. The children loved their personalised wooden advent calendars and we should be able to use them again and again!

3 Comments

  • Reply
    Cricut made countdown {wooden block calendar} - the-gingerbread-house.co.uk
    February 25, 2020 at 7:24 pm

    […] and December. I’ve shared a lot of my favourite Cricut projects with you, including the personalised wooden advent calendars we made. Today I wanted to tell you about the wooden block countdown calendar I also made. Although […]

  • Reply
    {Free printable} Christmas tree countdown for kids - the-gingerbread-house.co.uk
    November 19, 2020 at 7:16 pm

    […] DIY re-useable Advent calendars […]

  • Reply
    Monday Happy Things {Week 373} - the-gingerbread-house.co.uk
    December 6, 2021 at 7:33 am

    […] hated it so I’ve already swapped it for a homemade fidget toy advent calendar, re-using the wooden advent calendar I made a few years ago. My husband has the Joe & Seph’s Gourmet Popcorn advent calendar, […]

  • Leave a Reply