Silhouette Advent Calendar

I had so much fun with this project – I can’t wait to show you. :)
You’re going to be so shocked. I actually made something with . . . . wait for it  . . .  .
Paper!!!
I know. Crazy right?
It’s was awesome.

Silhouette has come out with something Fun for the Holidays!!

A Limited Edition Advent Calendar!!

The calendar is a 15″ Shadowbox and it comes with a download card with patterns for both styles of boxes you see here!
And guess what? They sent me one to try out!!

Here’s how mine turned out!

I decided to do the little decorative boxes rather than the drawers – though I like those too!
I made mine a fun red, white and pale blue combination. I love those colors together for Christmas!

So here’s how it works. You download all your shapes into your Silhouette Library – and they’re all numbered for you.
Each box top and bottom comes grouped together, if you want them to have different papers you just ungroup them and cut them out separately.

Here’s how my first box looks cut out.

Don’t ask me why I always show you white things on my white background. I will figure this blogging thing out eventually. ;)

The boxes are easy to put together – you just fold together the sections and glue.
Because I don’t ever craft with paper, I didn’t use any fancy glue. Just a regular old Elmer’s glue stick.

The patterns have handy dandy perforations so the boxes fold really easily and have nice straight lines.

Though you might be careful – perforations also mean that you can accidentally tear a section off if you are too enthusiastic with your glue stick.
Just sayin’.

You can go all crazy with fun patterns and papers – my daughter and I had a blast picking everything out together.
I would also like to thank Michele, my Silhouette guru, for advice when I had some issues with my mat and cutting speed. She is awesome.
Apparently mats don’t stay sticky forever (time to go shopping) and if you are having trouble cutting out heavier papers, slow down the speed on your Silhouette.

You guys probably already know this but I’m kind of clueless about it. Even after slowing down the machine I still had trouble with the glitter paper I used. It scored the top, but I had to finish cutting it out with scissors.
Don’t look too closely at those. :)

Once you get your boxes all cut out, you can decorate them up with ribbons, trim, rick rack, and shiny stuff!!

I love that wiry silver stuff. And did you know they make sticky ribbon for scrapbook stuff?? I do now!!
We found some fun prints and they were so easy to add to the boxes!

I wanted to keep with the “gift” theme – so I wrapped a ribbon around the whole shadowbox and layered a little bow for the top. This ribbon is just taped on, that way if I want to I can change out the color scheme next year!

I really like how the whole thing turned out!

We’ve decided that we’re each going to write out 6 Activities we’d like to do for the boxes – that way we’ll only know the ones we wrote out, and the rest will be surprises!

I hope you like it!

Silhouette only has these Advent Calendars for a limited time so you should go check them out while they still have them!
Plus – you’ll want to make them this month and have them all ready for December 1!!

The Calendar normally runs $39.99, but with the promo code FLAMINGO you can get it for $29.99!!!
Woohooo! Click here to go check it out!

You have to use the promo code though – and it’s only good today through November 11.

So what about you? Do you do Advent Calendars for Christmas?
What do you put in them? I’d love ideas!