Advent Calendar for Alex

It's my daughters birthday in December, and last year I made her an advent box (video instructions for that on my sidebar). She loved it, so this year I decided to make her another one - it turned into a bit of a project. I will list the steps I took at the end of the post.

As she is a single girl having fun living in London, I thought handbags would be perfect............

the label at the top of the board
each little bag is decorated in a different way


I filled them with lip gloss, earrings, eyeshadows, chocolate.....it was fun finding stuff small enough to fit in the bag


each bag closes with a velcro dot

Materials used:

16" x 18" blank canvas

aqua and white acrylic paint

martha stewart glitter

All papers by SEI

velcro dots

Forever Young Cricut cartridge

Designer Calendar Cricut cartridge

Lacy Labels Cricut cartridge

Fabulous Finds Cricut cartridge

1. With a dry brush I brushed the canvas in random stripes in aqua paint. I added white to the aqua to dilute the colour, and brushed some of that on. I finished by brushing white paint and sprinkling that with glitter whilst the paint was wet.

2 I cut 25 bags from the forever young cartridge at 3", and decorated them individually - I ran some of them through the cuttlebug to emboss before glueing them. I attached a velcro dot to close the flap, and two more dots on the back to hold the bag onto the board

3. I cut 25 assorted labels at 1 1/2" from Fabulous Finds. The numbers 1 - 25 were cut from designer calendar at 1", and glued to the labels using a xyron machine. I threaded the labels with red twine, and knotted around the handles. To keep the labels in place I used a small foam pad on each one (they were flopping around all over the place without this)

4. The sentiment was done on the computer, then, using the centre point feature on the expression, I cut lacy label 3. I folded a strip of card and attached it to the back of the label, then used drawing pins (push pins) to hold it in place. The ribbon was attached in the same way, to the frame of the canvas.
It should be arriving in London any day now......I hope it's survived the journey!

Regular readers of the blog may recall that I have had a few squirrel incidents in the past......remember the one that drowned in the water fountain in our garden at home? Well, it seems that USA squirrels are no better behaved that their British counterparts. I was driving the other day, and the car started juddering and shaking, so of course, I headed straight back home. When we had a look at the engine it was COVERED with bits of nuts, acorns and shells. Now we have a young oak tree close by, but how on earth did the acorns get under the bonnet (hood)? The car was towed to the garage, where they took one look at the debris and announced, in tones of doom 'you have squirrels'

Apparently the little pests, when it gets a bit cold, sneak under the car and climb up to a warm spot on the engine, and sit there munching on their dinner. Then for dessert, they munch their way through the electrical wires in the car. So we are a few hundred dollars poorer, the car is now safely locked up in the garage, and I have collected a whole bucket of little acorns - lucky for them I don't have a catapult!

See you tomorrow