Matchbox Advent Calender

I fell in love with a christmas tree shaped advent calender in paperchase last year (and being told that i wasn't allowed to spend £20 buying it) i was on the hunt for something similarlly amazing this year. i came across the advent calender from Kaiser crafts whilst flicking through the latest Cards and Papercraft magazine...i have fallen in love again!! however... i don't want to spend alot of money to then have to spend more cash on stuff to decorate it with. i had a quick look around on google and saw a few versions of a 'matchbox advent calender' and thought it was really cute (and a LOT cheaper than the kaiser one) so decided to give it a go. I'm not going to do a step by step tutorial... but i have put on lots of photos. if you have any questions, lemme know, I'll answer them as best i can.

I found using double sided tape worked really well for this project. I'm quite impatient and glue takes too long to dry. lol.

1 layer gives you 12 boxes, so for the 24 you need to make 2 of these layers. you could make this advent calender with boxes you have made yourself to give each box a bit more depth but not only am I impatient, I'm lazy too :) in case you're wondering - I gave all the matches to my friend who is a science teacher... those Bunsen burners don't light themselves!!

I found that covering each tray in paper made them very tight in their box, so I used promarkers to colour the tray so they blended in with the rest of the calender when they were pulled out.

I did originally think of using brads as tiny little handles to open each drawer with...however, I found that if you didn't have longish fingernails to get behind the brad it was quite hard to open!!! so I decided to use bakers twine looped though some holes and knotted in the front. The matchbox itself isn't made of very think card so I reinforced the front of the tray with a strip of thick board and then used my crop-o-dile to punch the holes. 

I used the same technique here for the numbers as I did for colour coding my promarkers. check out the post 'promarker and stamp storage' for details.

I used clear cellotape to attach each stack to the one next to it, I did this on the top and bottom of each set of 3. I think when I make the next one I will cover all around each stack of 3 matchboxes with patterned paper rather than just the exposed side. Although it doesn't look bad, I think by covering all sides in paper will give a neater finish.  

the top and bottom are made out of the same thick board i used to reinforce the trays, cut slightly larger than the matchboxes.

I trimmed the bakers twine down to just behind the knot, giving a neater finish - also I was finding that the longer ones were getting caught in the tray underneath when it was opened and closed :)

so that's my finished advent calender!! I have to say I am VERY happy with how it turned out.... super cute!! 

please leave a comment and let me know what you think!xxxx