Friday 24 October 2014

Advent in November: Prepare

The third of the preparation posts for Pause, Ponder and Prepare can be found here.

Originally I was going to make my Advent Study book so that I could store my Advent Calendar in it but after I decided what book to use I decided I would make my Calendar totally separately.   I have been collecting inspiration on Pinterest for quite a while relating to Christmas tags and Advent Calendars.   You can find inspiration for tags here and for Advent Calendars here.

I am using #8 manila tags.  If you live in the UK the best deal on these can be found at Craft Obsessions.

First I decided on a colour scheme and then I gathered together papers, embellishments, ribbons, acrylic paints and anything else I could think of that would be useful.  The papers weren't particularly Christmas related as I decided to use pale blue and pale brown.


I looked in my stash to find a set of 3D letter sets where I had enough numbers to make 1 to 25.  These foam Thickers are just great.

I checked to see that they were the right size and proportion for the tags.

I decided that it would be easier to make all the numbers for the tags at the same time.  It's much easier to have a 'production line' to make them rather than making them each day.

Using my die cutter and some dies and a couple of punches I randomly cut out shapes from the papers I had chosen.  At this point I wasn't thinking too much about how I would assemble these.

I cut pieces of ribbon and sorted out some embellishment.

Then I laid the large circles out and built up the layers.  I stuck the ribbon and the inner circle on each one.   Then I moved them all round until I had the order I wanted to use them in. 

Then I stuck on the letters and the embellishment before trimming the ribbon.

And here's a closeup.


My plan with the tags for the advent calendar is to have one side of the tag decorated as a Christmas decoration with the number on it, with the other side having the Bible verse on it that tells the Christmas story.   I'm planning to put up some ribbon or twine and peg all the tags to it with the numbers facing out and then each day in December turning the tag around.

I have worked on the Christmas decoration side of all the tags making several at once so that they are all ready for November 1st.   Come back tomorrow to see what I have done.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice


2 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see how they evolve! I'm getting into Christmas thoughts for November too.
    X x

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love the idea of using gift tags, and am so excited to start this Bible study and art project! Thank you for creating it :-)

    ReplyDelete

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