Elegant Advent Calendar

I have a tiny little obsession with advent calendars. You may have noticed…. HERE. Or HERE. Or HERE. Or HERE. I know. I have a problem! 🙂

I made another one this year to give as a gift. I decided to make a more luxe, blinged-out version. It started with these little resin mini-ornaments from Michael’s:

Yeah. Not so cute or luxe as-is. They were sloppily painted and a weird mix of colors. So I spray painted them white, then hand-painted parts with pearlescent paint. And I switched out the gold hangers for sparkly thread instead. Much prettier!

I used metallic white/silver fabric for the tree and the pockets (so shiny and pretty in person!) with a white cotton background and a touch of aqua in the border. My favorite part is the fur trim around the edges!

The shiny buttons make the tree look pretty even when there are no ornaments hanging on it yet.

I added felt tabs across the back so that it can hang from a dowel. I quilted around the edge of the tree and around the border. And  after struggling to get the fur on, I ended up using hot glue to attach it. Awesome, I know.

Doesn’t it look cute with all the ornaments hanging on it?! If you look closely, you’ll see there is one button up above the tree so that the snowflake lines up to hit right on the top point of the tree. That’s the last ornament to be put on.

I made the pockets by sewing two pieces of fabric together and flipping them right sides out, ironing them, then sewing the strips to the background fabric. That way the pockets are lined and the edges are all finished and nice looking. The numbers are hand-cut and ironed on using double-sided fusible webbing.

It was super fun to make a more glammed-up version of the advent calendar. And it was much quicker to make because I didn’t have to sew any ornaments. If I ever make another calendar, I would definitely use the mini-ornaments again!