Sooo… what tasteful works of homemade Christmas art has Carolyn proudly displayed in the entrance hall to assault the eyes of unsuspecting visitors to our house, hmmm? Oh, a whole bunch of little cardboard icebergs… hmmmm, ok, yeah. “Interesting” decor choice… #kindergartenchic #sohotrightnow
It’s an advent calendar!!
Also; I’ve just looked up what is a group of icebergs called, and it’s an armada. Cool, eh!
So, I saw this cute advent calendar on Burdastyle and couldn’t resist… because I freaking LOVE Christmas! and particularly Christmas crafts and all those fiddly decorative bits and bobs that you get to strew about your house…. maybe I even don’t mind a bit of baking too?! Just a teensy bit…? Maaaaybe #notreally 
On the site it’s called an Origami advent calendar, which is perhaps a little bit of a misnomer… because my understanding of “origami” is that there must be no cutting nor any sticking/pasting too, and these cute little contraptions involve both. If not origami though I don’t know what you’d rightly call this kind of construction, actually. Just … making boxes? cutting and pasting little receptacles together? Well, whatever. It’s a free pattern.
I used some card stock that Mum and Dad gave me when they cleaned out their shed…. it was perfectly clean and in very good nick! traced the template and cut out 24 identical shapes. So my icebergs are all the same size. In retrospect, if I was going to do this again (unlikely) or even if I re-use them for next year I would mix it up size-wise by printing out the template in two or more different scales, say 75%, and maybe even also as small as 60% to get a little range of sizes. I think they’d look pretty cool with more of a variety of sizes, but I’m ok with how the arrangement looks for now.
Anyway, let’s be real… it’s the contents that you get excited about, really!
Instead of sealing the boxes completely closed with double-sided tape as recommended, I put tiny strips of velcro on it, so you can open the boxes to get to the sweeties inside without potentially destroying them. See, it took quite a while to make 24 little boxes, like hours! and so I’ll probably re-use them, at least one more year. Hopefully more!
For the numbers, I used my old alphabet/number stamps that I bought many years ago… during my cardmaking phase. I found the boxes can fit up to four Lindt balls, with a bit of manipulation and shoving. Probably Craig and I will be the only ones excited about popping open the daily “iceberg” and counting down until Christmas. Or maybe, just me!
speaking of icebergs… I took these pictures in the vicinity f Le Conte glacier, Alaska, during our trip there this year. So so beautiful!!!
I don’t know if I’ve ever shown here my other, far less trendy, advent calendar, that I made yeeeeeeears ago when the children were little… I seem to recall it was a free pattern too, maybe from the Woman’s Weekly or Better Homes and Gardens something like that.
I still put sweeties into the heart pockets every year and have this year too, although who knows when my children will drop by and eat them?! This one’s a bit “country” but in my own defence that was the hippest of hip decor styles at the time! I know, it’s a bit dated now, but that can’t be helped… if there’s one set-in-stone rule about style, and this goes for decor and fashion; and that’s that what is HOT one year will definitely be NOT in a few years!!
one of the fabrics was designed by a Carolyn somebody, whose name was printed on the selvedge… and I had the brilliant idea of snipping off a “Carolyn” and attaching it to the back, seemed fortuitous at the time. Now I’m mentally apologising to the de-surname-d Carolyn who actually designed the fabric… whoops!
Now, if you’ll excuse me I still have a small avalanche of fabrics awaiting transformation into Christmas gifts and my summer wardrobe, and it’s already the first day of summer so I’d better get cracking…. au revoir!!
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