Sunday 16 November 2014

Upcycled Stampin' Up! Advent Calendar

I may have mentioned once or twice in previous posts, that we are currently undertaking a project to extend our house. I've secretly code-named it Operation Craft Room (shhh don't tell the hubby! lol). Anyway, the house is a complete mess, dust and mud everywhere - inside and out - as you will see from the dusty window in the picture below. In the midst of all this activity and noise, I was busy building a house of my own (I do hope my builders are better at their measurements than I was with this project, ahem!).
And so, this is the house that I built - out of upcycled Stampin' Up! packaging cardboard. I used the heavy duty cardboard that comes in packs to keep the product flat such as the treat boxes, DSP etc. I drew the windows in after cutting the roof shape and cut them all out by hand with a Stanley knife adn a metal ruler! (Oh I so need an e-cutter!).

stampin up uk christmas projects ideas handmade advent calendars

I made "floors" inside for the boxes to rest on too. It's actually a pretty sturdy thing. I covered the walls with Whisper White card stock and painted on a coat of Mod Podge to protect it a) from me whilst completing it and b) from the Bedlam Brothers who it is for. They now have two advent calendars - one each! The hope is, they will now NOT fight over whose turn it is to open the calendar each day as they did last year. What's the betting they'll be fighting over who opens which calendar instead?

Now unlike my builders who do know what they are doing, I kind of made this on the fly and got the measurements for the "floors" wrong. I made them as wide as the side walls when they needed to be slightly smaller so I had to re-score the side flaps on each side at the back. This left a bit of an unsightly warping and wrinkling, plus the seams in the various pieces of Whisper White were very noticeable. I had been wondering what to do when I saw this project from Patty Bennett in the US - kerching! Bricks from the ticket duo builder punch - brilliant! I was able to hide the seam on both sides at the front with the little ticket and the seam and the ugly warping at the back!! Fantastic - thank you Patty!!

stampin up uk christmas projects ideas handmade advent calendars

I made all the drawers from Real Red card stock and covered the fronts with Nordic Noel DSP. The roof is covered with Under the Tree Speciality DSP! My oldest son has filled the drawers with chocolate. He was so happy that I let him do it - bless! All in all I'm pretty chuffed with how it looks now.
I hope you like it too! Thanks for stopping by.

p.s. don't forget I will be moving my blog soon, so please pop over to http://bedlamandbutterflies.co.uk/ and follow me by email or Bloglovin' thanks x

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