Snow is Glistening Advent Calendar

This project was a real labor of love. I had hoped to have it completed by December 1st, but it took me much longer than anticipated. I am really happy with the way it turned out though. The best part was giving it to my sweet granddaughter yesterday! Right now she is still a little young, but I hope it will become one of the holiday traditions she looks forward to each year. Here is the finished piece, along with lots of other photos below.

This is a kit from Kaisercraft that I purchased quite a while ago. I had forgotten I even had it but came across it when cleaning my studio one day this past summer. Wish I had started it then! The kit comes with a balsam wood frame, drawers and numbers made of chipboard, BUT absolutely no instructions! It only has one photo showing what it looks like completed. I thought perhaps my kit was packaged without the instructions by accident, but after searching online I found others complaining of the same thing. Unfortunately before I could get to the fun part of decorating there were several grueling steps that were required to start with. Let me tell you...this first part was absolutely NO FUN at all! I will share how I put this together to hopefully help others.

First, the wood parts came connected which required them to be cut apart. If I had access to a band saw it would have been a piece of cake. Instead, I had to snip each piece using tin snips. Honestly my hand hurt for days afterwards. I saw many others who created this project saying they used a pair of  Tim Holtz scissors which cut through easily...but I didn't have those. I tried my old SU! rubber cutting scissors but those didn't work, so I went with the tin snips. Each little nub had to be sanded afterward in order for it to fit into the slots on the main backing piece.

After the cutting and sanding, there was the task of painting each piece. I used red acrylic paint. I was careful not to paint the nibs or allow paint to drip into the slots. These pieces fit together quite snugly and even the slightest amount of paint would make assembly very difficult. As you can see, I wasn't too concerned about even coverage in the center of the piece because I knew that would be covered. After 2 coats of paint and allowing it to dry overnight I assembled the frame. Despite being careful while painting, several of the small pieces had to have the nibs sanded down to fit into the slots on the frame to create the cubbies for the drawers. After all the pieces were in place, I carefully applied wood glue to the slots from the back where each piece joined the wood backing frame.

Finally I could get to the fun part! I picked several patterned papers for the drawers...mostly retired SU!, but I also used a line from Simple Stories called Oh What Fun! that had adorable little characters like snowmen, reindeer and penguins on it. I cut each strip to cover three sides and a square of each for the back side to cover the seams.

The 3/4" Circle Punch worked perfectly for the notch in the center of each drawer. I used Tombo Multipurpose Adhesive to assemble the little chipboard drawers. As I assembled them I attached a small rubber band on each one to allow the glue to set. I also used the same glue on most of the paper so it would easily slide into place on the chipboard, but on each end I also used Tear & Tape Adhesive as well. This helped add strength to the drawers and really held the paper in place while the rest of the glue dried.

I decorated each drawer using a variety of punched and fussy hand cut pieces. Each one is numbered using die cuts, stickers and the Labeler Alphabet stamp set. Even though the kit came with nice chipboard numbers, I didn't use them because they were quite large and left little room for other embellishments.

After decorating all the little drawers I created a winter scene to fit into the center. I used the Snow Is Glistening stamp set embossed with White Embossing Powder for the trees and the coordinating snowflake dies for both this back ground piece and for many of the little drawers. Here's a closer look at the drawers...

and the bottom drawers...

The center part has some Evergreen Sprigs, Red Polka-dot Ribbon and some charms that were available from SU! during previous Holiday Catalogs.

The 3-D resin Santa figurine was something I found in my stash of craft supplies...not sure where I got it? He's holding one of the snowflake charms that were available last month with the Snowflake Showcase of products.

More detail on each of the little drawers.

The drawers are large enough to hold two little candies each

Next year when Madelyn is a little older, it will be fun to fill it with other little items besides candy. For now, I think she enjoyed looking at all the little drawers and eating the Reeses Peanut Butter cup.

Now that I have this project finished I can concentrate on getting other things done. It's such a busy time of year! Thanks for taking the time to visit me here.