7 Weeks of Christmas Crafts Week 3: Advent Calendar

I could not be more thrilled about how this week's project turned out!  Not only do I have a fully functional Advent Calendar, I have an awesome piece of art to hang on my wall during the Christmas season. 

Here is my inspiration photo from pinterest:

Source: allthingsbeautiful-charity.blogspot.com via Cassie on Pinterest

I loved the creativity of this calendar.  I planned to replicate it completely but hit a snag when I found out those paper mache boxes were $1 each.  That's $25 just for the boxes.  That's too much for my frugal mind especially not knowing how it would turn out.  I made my entire thing for $25 total (not including what I will put inside).  Here is my finished product!

By the way I ordered a new DSLR camera this week and it should be here Tuesday so my blog photo quality should be going up a notch.  And I got a fabulous deal on Amazon (which is still going btw).

Here's my process step by step:

-I started by making 2.25inch square boxes by using my Aunt's cricut.  I cut 25 of those puppies in no time using extra cardstock already on hand.

-Once the boxes were cut, I had to fold and glue them.  This was a bit tedious and I was noticing not all boxes were perfect.  This is when I decided to put the 3x3 inche overlay square on the tops to hide the imperfections.

- I glued the 3x3 inch overlays to the top of the boxes. 

- I used the Cricut to cut all the numbers and glued those to the tops.

- I attached magnets to the back of each box that came with their own adhesive.

- I layed out all my boxes to figure out what size frame I needed.  I was shooting for an interior measurement of 18x18 inches but ended up finding a 20x20 inch one at Goodwill for $5!!  This frame is heavy duty and distressed and awesome!!

- My husband cut a piece of sheet metal to fit the back of the frame and he attached it with some  nails. 

- I then eyeballed the spacing and stuck the boxes on and we hung it with the hanger that was already attached to the frame!  AWESOME!

Here you see the boxes behind the fun covered fronts!

And here it sits in it's awesome corner! 

I still need to fill the boxes.  I want to do a mixture of candy, scripture, and activities to do as a family in the boxes.