Advent Calendar Craft-Along {Part 5}

Another week down and it’s time for an update on the Advent calendar craft-along. (See the introduction post here, or the last update here).

I almost didn’t write an update this week. Up to this morning, I’d finished off the baubles from last week and made 3 strings of tinsel (from glitter pipe cleaners – hardly a craft at all!). I was feeling embarrassed about my total lack of focus, and was just about ready to give up. Just put it aside and pretend I’d never started it.

But where’s that going to get me? So I got the felt out, and cut out some shapes with my Brother Scan’n’Cut (which cut the felt really nicely!) and did some stitching.

Before I knew it, I was running late for school pick up (oops!) and more importantly, I had another 4 decorations done, and another 3 ready to sew. A bit more stitching away while the kids had their afternoon snack, and I’m now up to 17 decorations complete.

Let’s have a closer look at the decorations:

The star for the top of the tree is made from glitter vinyl, and is sewn to a felt backing. I didn’t want the star to be hanging down, so I put a hanging loop across the centre back to attach it to the tree.

For the candy canes, I cut 4 red candy cane pieces (2 for the front and 2 for the backs) and then one white candy cane. I cut the white one into pieces, and put every second one on two red candy canes (I should have taken pictures – sorry!). I sewed the white pieces to the red, added the hanging loops and sewed the felt backing pieces on, using a blanket stitch around the outside.

I used some baby ric-rac to decorate the bell and the ringer of the bell is made from glitter vinyl (for a little bit of sparkle).

My two gingerbread men have sequins for buttons, green seed beads for eyes (giving me flashbacks to friendship pins in high school), and an embroidered smile.

I couldn’t find any tinsel that was small enough for my Christmas tree, but I did find some gold glitter pipe cleaners (chenille sticks), that would do the job. I curved them into shape to look like tinsel hanging from the branches, and added a loop at each end to hang them over buttons.

Only 7 decorations to go. In 5 days! Plus the button sewing and finishing off. It’s still looking like a challenge, but I might actually pull this one off.

How are you going with your advent calendar?