DIY Christ Centered Advent Calendar

I have always loved advent calendars.  I have the best memories of my mom's old quilted one that had a candy kiss tied onto each day with a ribbon.  It was so fun to eat the candy kiss when the day came around.  I decided it was time to start my own advent calendar memories for my little family for Christmas.  I had been brainstorming ideas for a DIY advent calendar when I found the idea for a Christ centered calendar.  The blog sunlitpages.com features an advent calendar with different pictures of Christ on each day.  I loved the idea of focusing on Christ while counting down to Christmas.  The advent calendar found on this blog looks quite a bit different from the design I came up with,  I love how my advent calendar reflects my own style.

Supplies needed:

1. Wood for the main part (I used 4" wide tongue and groove pine that is actually left over from the walls of my parent's cabin)
2. Thin plywood for the days of the month
3. 1/2 copper pipe with brackets
4. Twine
5. Black vinyl
6. Small pictures of Christ
7. Small copper nails
8. Wood glue
9. Cricket Machine
10. Fake pine sprigs
11. Wood stain

Above are some other supplies that are useful for this project

So to start out I glued together 4 pieces of 4" pine slats. The original pieces were about 12 feet long so I measured out what I wanted and cut them.  Like I mentioned above, I used some leftover pine that is on the interior walls of my parent's cabin.  I love using leftover materials for projects-- it saves money and prevents waste!  I then stained the pine with a dark walnut stain that I bought at Home Depot.  The wood glue is from The Wood Connection.

I then cut 3" by 3.5" rectangles out of a thin plywood.  I actually bought a few small pieces of thin plywood at Micheal's craft for this, which worked out really well.  And to clarify, my husband cut these out for me haha

I bought the pictures of Christ at Deseret Book (an LDS bookstore).  The really nice thing is almost every card already had a scripture on the back related to the artwork on the front. I then trimmed each picture of Christ to fit on the little wood rectangles.  I typed up each scripture and put it on the front of the wood piece so that as each day comes, a scripture about Christ can be read.  I found some of the most beautiful pictures of Christ!  I also decided to leave the plywood pieces natural instead of painting or staining them.  I'm so happy I decided to leave them natural!

I used the wood glue to glue the pictures of Christ to the wood pieces, as well as the typed scripture.  I find that this wood glue works SO much better than mod podge.  I am not a fan of mod podge, I don't care how careful you are, it always seems to bubble at least a little.   I used my Cricut Machine to cut out the numbers for the day of the month on black vinyl.  This is the Cricut cartridge I used to cut out the numbers.  This is a great cartridge with a lot of different fonts.

These are the little copper nails that I found to hang each plywood piece on.  I bought these at Smith's Marketplace.  I love that they match the copper pipe.  I used a small drill bit to a drill a hole in each little wood piece.

These are the brackets I found to hold the copper pipe in place.  Both the copper pipe and the brackets I found at Home Depot on the plumbing aisle.  I have been really into copper lately and was excited to incorporate it in my advent calendar. 

 I used some simple jute twine to hang the advent calendar.  The sprig of fake pine i found at Micheal's Craft and cut a few pieces off of it to attach to the copper pipe with wire.  And that's it!  I am in love with this advent calendar and I love that it is all about Christ which is what Christmas is all about!

xo

Kemley