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DIY Advent Calendar Christmas Tree

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Last night I stayed up into the wee hours making this gorgeous DIY Advent Calendar Christmas Tree with a pattern from Jennifer Maker.

DIY Advent calendar in a Christmas tree shape

Let me just tell you – that woman is talented!

This beautiful tree is made entirely with cardstock and includes 25 drawers and nooks to tuck away little treats for each day of the Advent.

It also makes for a great Christmas decoration.

What I Used to Make this Advent Calendar

I used my Cricut Maker machine to do all the cut outs but Jennifer has PDF files available too, if you prefer to cut the pieces by hand.

When I decide to make a project, sometimes I just want to dive right in.

Of course, I had no holiday cardstock on hand – so I had to make do with what I had – and honestly, I think it came out really nice.

I used papers from this collection and this collection and this collection and this one too.

For the vertical posts, I just used plain red and green cardstock.

All in all you will need 18 12×12 sheets of cardstock and a sheet of glitter cardstock for the date ornaments.

How to Make This DIY Christmas Tree Calendar

Jennifer Maker has amazing instructions and videos in her post on how to cut out and assemble this project – so I won’t get into all of that here.

But there are just a couple tips that I have to add.

Additional Tips to Make This Project

Quite by accident, I ended up using double sided cardstock (as opposed to cardstock that is white on one side) because that is what I had on hand.

This actually worked out really great because I could assemble the drawers with either side facing out.

This gave me a greater variety of designs to choose from for my drawers with the same amount of cuts, if that makes sense.

DIY Advent Calendar in Christmas tree shape with one drawer pulled out.

Another tip is to remember to change the paper setting on your Cricut Maker machine when you switch from regular cardstock to the glitter cardstock.

I forgot to do this and had to do the ornaments over again, because the cuts on my first set did not go all the way through. (I hate wasting materials!)

Also, Jennifer recommends using tacky glue, but I was running out so I used Elmer’s glue sticks instead. This seemed to work fine and I hope it will hold through the season.

Finally, as mentioned in the tutorial, I used masking tape to stick the ornaments onto the boxes.

The shade of gold glitter cardstock that I used is very similar to the masking tape so there is not much contrast and you cannot see the numbers from farther away.

I don’t mind the effect because it looks like a little decorated tree from afar, but if you want to see the numbers more clearly, then you might want to find cardstock that is a markedly different color than the masking tape.

Learn to Make Your Own SVG Files

As much as I love my Cricut machine, I don’t feel that I am creative enough to come up with patterns for projects like this DIY Advent Calendar all on my own.

I am more of a find a pattern and use it kind of person.

So, I am a bit in awe of people like Jennifer that make these ideas come to life.

If you are inspired to create your own projects for the Cricut, then Jennifer offers a course on how to make your own SVG files.

The course is called A Cut Above – and one day, I may try my hand at it.

But I can tell you that I have taken many of Jennifer Maker’s blogging courses and she is a great teacher.

Fun Project for Cricut

All in all, I thought that this Advent Calendar was a really fun project to make on the Cricut.

It was relatively easy and was something you can make while binge watching your favorite show.

I know my daughter is looking forward to 25 days of treats in December!

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