Advent calendar matchbox style

Little introduction for those of you who don't know how an advent calendar works:

People (mostly kids) get these before December 1st coz that's when you start opening it. It's got 24 little doors, pockets or alike (little drawers in this case), one for each day until Christmas. So at the 24th you open the last one.

In Germany every kid has at least one - it goes from simple bought ones with chocolate inside up to big (and expensive) ones from Lego, Playmobil, Barbie... whatever you can imagine. Of course - as it is with everything: Selfmade is the best!

Since I've seen lots of these matchbox drawer advent calendars in blogs and you tube videos I decided to try and make one. My son already had a bought one from his Grandma so I thought it would be only fair if this Grandma (aka my Mom) gets one too.

It was a big project - as it always is - coz I went far too much into detail again (like embossing the numbers on the drawers for example). But the outcome is pretty nice for a first... See for yourselves:

The drawers are pretty small of course so I had a hard time finding lots of different stuff to put in. For example: The only selfmade Christmas cookies that fit in were the little stars. I found some small chocolate Santas for 6th December (our "Nikolaustag") and the final 24th. I put in some jelly beans, some "Merci" chocolates and every of the sides also inherited a lottery scratch ticket.

Thankfully this one is not for the bin, it can be used again. But next time Moms boyfriend has to find stuff to fill it with, not me! ;)

Chrissycards

Of course I also made some Christmas cards this last year. Took a sketch, a Christmas paper set I bought (but didn't use) the year before, three Spellbinders die cuts, eyelets (although I needed two different eyelet-setter because one of the eyelets was too far in the middle for the Crop-o-dile), glue, the distresser and distress inks.

Oh, of course I used the little die cuts to create the sentiment which I attached with a bracelet.

This are almost half the amount I made. Took up quite some time... ;)

Christmas - crafty time

This year lots of my Christmas gifts to friends and family came directly out of my crafty corner. Here are a few of them.

After the woman in my fav crafty shop promised me that they really do their job well - and lasting - I bought a few of the porcellan pens and had to try them right away. First I prettified a mug for my (almost) sis-in-law, the girlfriend of the guy some call "Batman"... ;)

And I got the hang of it so I made some Cappuccino cups for one of my best friends and her boyfriend:

For my godchild I went back to the usual "paperwork" and made a cooking recipe book with her fav colours violet and green.

I obviously filled some pages with some recipes the girl likes... But those are family secrets... ;)

Pressie-Wrap

Another birthday, another crafty challenge. In my cupboard was only kiddy and Christmas wrapping-paper left so I had to think of a different way to wrap this box with lots of books in it:

Resolution: Take some thick white A3 paper (three in my case) and start stamping. One stamp up to 4 times on each paper - disarranged and criss-cross - cover those prints with paper or post-its, take another stamp and do the same thing... keep doing this until the pages look like this:

The rest is just boring business of covering the box with these papers and the edges with plain black cardbord stripes. I then made a simple closure out of black and white card stock which I attached with a sticky hook-and-loop fastener (Klettverschluss for the Germans ;)).

This is the outcome:

I think it was worth the effort - and looks like the b-day girl thinks so too! :)

Back in business... ;)

Did not post much lately and do not even have a good excuse for it. Just needed a blogging-break for some reason. But even if I do not like new years resolutions - it obviously also works without having one! ;)

So I decided to post some pictures of the many things that kept me busy in my little workshop-corner during my silent months. Starting with the most recent things, which would be some birthday pressies. I was invited to the unbelievable amount of three birthdays this weekend and two of the pressies were my duty.

Although - the first pressie is a two-in-one because this is a couple who's b-days are just a week apart. Since I was not there for the first one I brought both pressies to the second:

They got a bookmark each. For that I used the big Ranger-Tags, distress inks, masks and lots of stamps.

I also tried the Ranger crackle paint bronze with this but I don't think I am really getting the hang of that one. If anyone has got lots of experience with those inks and some tipps for me, how to use it better or on which projects I should use it - please let me know! I am happy for every hint. Thx a mil! :D