Caly Person

Hi friends!

I’m so excited to share today’s project with you! Sometimes, I spend a lot of time on projects that are just for me. In the past those projects have included cross-stitch, crochet, quilting, sewing, etc. They’re labors of love, but but that love and appreciate for the project is returned for years to come.

This idea came to me from a friend who shared this Instagram post from @thecraftpatch. I loved the project so much, that I sought out to find the Village Advent to decorate my own.

This Village Advent comes as an unfinished wood rotating advent calendar with unpainted houses and frosted bottle brush trees. Here’s a look at the untouched project:

I’m not sure if they are still available in stores, but I recommend calling your local store(s) to find out if they have any in stock. Just this week, I saw someone returning one as I was waiting in line to check out – you might get lucky! Full disclosure – this is a BIG project. I spent a bit of time each weekend over several weeks.

To start, I recommend taking the tiers apart. To do this, I took a heat tool to each of the roofs and heated them up to loosen the glue and carefully pulled each tier a part. The lights are simply pulled out of each house and tier as I went. This makes it much easier to paint. Regarding the bottle brush trees – you can bend them out of the way to paint, but I recommend taking these off, too. My son helped me pry them off using the same heat method as above. They’re harder to take off than the tiers, believe it or not. Many of the tree bases didn’t make it (that’s why beads are in their place on my project). My friend was smarter because she just twisted the trees from their bases. Be smart like my friend.

Next, plan and purchase your supplies. Nothing like going to the store 5 times, right? Thank you to Jennifer from @thecraftpatch for her blog post who shared a photo similar to what I shared above with her supplies. It definitely guided me in the right direction. I didn’t do my village advent exactly like hers and because I’m a paper-crafter, I used lots of supplies and tools from my paper-crafting stash (all linked below).

Next, spray your houses and drawers with primer – this will save you a lot of time with painting. My darkest color seemed to require more coats than the rest. I decided to paint the church at the top white. That takes the number of houses down to 24 – so choosing 8 colors of paint made it easy to divide up between the remaining houses. The colors I used in Anita’s Acrylic Paints are (from left to right): Taffeta Pink, Coral Cove, Light Coral, Sorbet, Light Turquoise, Hawaii, Deep Blue, and Hyacinth. After painting the church white, I glittered it while the paint was still wet. It matched the white glitter cardstock that I used for all the roofs perfectly. I used a pair of scallop scissors to cut the roof lines for a decorative edge – totally optional! You could just paint yours. I made the church top with white glitter cardstock as well.

Next, I added snow to the tiers. I just did the front and sides of the houses since I knew it would barely be visible once all the decorations were in place. I did have to pull some off in front of the houses to help the drawers fit better, but I wanted some there to start (less work than adding snow later).

Once it was all dry, I stacked the tiers, rewired the lights as I went, and glued the tiers back together with hot glue. At the very bottom of the village advent is a wooden lazy susan. I added some silicon feet to them – this gives the whole thing better grip and raises it just enough for me to adhere the light’s battery compartment to the bottom of the last tier so I can hide the battery pack behind the pom-pom trim. I added a smaller pom-pom trim to the other tiers, too.

I have to give credit to my 15 year old, Evan, who helped me decorate a lot of the trees on this project. It was his idea to replace the damaged tree bases with the beads. The rest of the project was so much fun for me – making wreaths from chenile stems, glittering plastic deers, die-cutting holly and lamp posts, making tiny bows, etc. – ALL the things – to decorate each house and filling in open space. I know Hobby Lobby has pre-made wreaths, but they are too big. The ones I made barely fit – take it from me. I LOVED creating my own little holiday clusters with the pinecones and decorating the roof elevations with different supplies.

After all the houses and trees were decorated, I worked on adding decorations to the drawers. I hand-drew the decor with a nordic feel like Jennifer did. I used a Posca Paint Pen, but any white gel pen will work also.

I can’t tell you how excited I was at this stage – all I had left to do was to add numbers to the drawers. The original village advent had numbers in order from the bottom up, but I mixed it up – makes it more fun to spin the village advent to look for the next number in the countdown to Christmas! The numbers I used are vinyl numbers I cut with my Scan N Cut 2, but you can buy stickers or hand-paint them. The finished project makes my heart sing! Here are photos side by side with natural light and with the lights off (I closed my shutters).

I don’t have the ability to share a non-YouTube video on my blog, but here are collages of the project from different views as it is turned:

This truly will be a project cherished for years to come and I’m so excited about it! I hope you like it!

I have another prop that I made to use on this village advent, but ended up not using it because the proportions didn’t feel right, but I still love them, none-the-less! These make for great decor on their own. I decorated Tim Holtz’s Santa Mugs and Christmas Confections (peppermint candy and sticks) by glittering them up with Distress Glitter. Next, I added 1″ styrofoam balls to fill the base of the mugs. I added paste with a palette knife to mimic whipped topping.

While the paste was still wet, I added my peppermint candy and stick to each mug and finished by sprinkling some glass seed beads on top. That’s it! This project took me maybe 15 mins to make – super quick and soooo easy!

---

I hope you enjoyed this project! Thanks so much for visiting!

SUPPLIES:
*NOTE:  Affiliate links may be used (at no additional cost to you) – thank you for your support! To find out more about how affiliate links work and the companies I’m affiliated with, please check my Shopping/Affiliate Disclosure Page. 

---

TH Sizzix Vault Christmas Magic SSS	LF Magic Iris Holly Wreath Add-On SSS	TH Idea-ology Christmas Salvaged Reindeer SSS	TH Idea-ology Christmas Candy Confections SSS	TH Idea-ology Christmas Santa Mugs SSS
PPP Berry Bright Shaker Beads SSS	PPP Metallic Gold Pearls SSS	PPP Ruby Red Pearls SSS	PPP Cherry Red Pearls SSS	PPP Sea Foam Pearls SSS
PPP Pacific Blue Pearls SSS	PPP Lilac Pearls SSS	SSS Cherry Dazzling Gems SSS	SSS White Glitter Cardstock SSS	SSS White Glitter Cardstock SSS
SSS Glitter Cardstock Christmas SSS	SSS Glitter Cardstock SSS	SSS Lipstick Red CS SSS	Distress Collage Medium Matte SSS	TH Distress Glitter Clear Rock Candy SSS
Surebonder Glue Gun H-270 SSS	Surebonder Mini Glue Sticks SSS	1 inch Styrofoam Balls SSS	Ranger Heat It Craft Tool SSS	Wagner Heat Tool SSS
Uni POSCA xFine White SSS	Sakura White Gelly Roll SSS	TCW Light & Fluffy Modeliing Paste SSS	TH Palette Knife 2pk SSS

---

MOST USED TOOLS:

SSS Intense Black Ink SSS	Copic Sketch Markers SSS	Hammermill Color Copy Digital Cover 100lb SSS	Neenah Solar White 110 lb SSS	Black Cardstock SSS
MSP MISTI Teal SSS	MSP Mini MISTI SSS	MSP MISTI Mouse Pad SSS	Wagner Heat Tool SSS	SSS Brush Powder Tool SSS
3D Foam Strips – Black SSS	SSS 3D Foam Strips SSS	SSS 3D Foam Squares White SSS	SSS 3D Foam Squares Black & White SSS	SSS Craft Tacky Glue SSS
AG Ultra Fine Metal Tip Applicator SSS	GKD Fine Tip Bottles SSS	TH 6.75 Inch Mini Recoil Snips SSS	SSS Fine Detail Scissors SSS	SSS Pawsitively Everyday Scissors SSS
SSS Magnetic Glass Mat SSS	SSS Stamp and Stencil Mat SSS	SSS Pawsitively Everything Tool (PET) SSS	SSS Blending Brush Set Small & Large SSS	SSS Small Blending Brushes SSS
SSS Large Blending Brushes SSS	SSS Scoring Board SSS	Teflon Bone Folder SSS	Pawsitively Everything T-Square Ruler SSS	SSS Reverse Tweezers SSS
Sakura White Gelly Roll SSS	IKS Square SSS	IKS Rectangle SSS	SSS Embellishment Wand Place and Pierce SSS	SSS Pawsitively Perfect Craft Tacky Mat 6.25 x 8.25 SSS
GKD Intri-Cut Die Cutting Machine SSS	GKD Intri-Cut Magnetic Platform Set SSS

DESTASH SALE!
If you’re interested in buying some lightly used or unused products in mystery destash boxes, please check out my Destash Sale Page!