I kept promising you my special treat, and today, finally, the day has come! My first, very own advent calendar. Even though I’m a little too old for something like an advent calendar myself, I’ve always loved having one, and this year, I decided getting one again, after years of going without one. Now, with all the fabulous scrapbook kits I’ve collected over the last year (and especially with my weakness for Christmas kits – I have tons of them and still have more on my wishlist!), I wanted to have a paper based advent calendar for which I could use my digiscrap stuff. Whatever it was going to be, I wanted to make sure it would be large enough to hold some snacks and candies (I got a lot of good European treats from friends that I wanted to use for this). Most important, however, I wanted to be able to store it easily for re-use next year, without it ending up taking a lot of storage space. So, I went on an online search, and I found the perfect solution! Paper gift bags. They offer a tutorial and a template on this website:
The template comes in a pdf file, but when I opened it in Photoshop I could easily select the template, transfer it onto a new canvas, re-size it to meet my needs and start clipping my papers to it. Super easy! Generally, I used to papers and sometimes a ribbon that I clipped to the template, added a small embellishment, and with two paper bags on an A4 page plus the embellishments, everything was ready for print. Afterwards, it was just cutting and assembling, adding a number, stringing a ribbon through them to hold the bag and now I have the cutest advent calendar! And what’s the best: after the Christmas season is over, I can fold the gift bags and easily store them away without damaging them!
