Advent Calendar

Tonight I am sharing with you photos of the Advent Calendar I have just finished for Jerremy.
I just LOVE it!!  I found so many good ideas on the net.  Too many to list so if you want some good ideas just do a search on 'muffin tin advent calendar'

Ingredients

• Muffin/patty cake tin, one that has the 'cup' flush with the tin' otherwise the magnet will not adhere very well
• Gold spray paint
• Magnets large enough to cover the hole
• Patterned paper - mine was some a random kit (nearly all gone now, thankfully)
• Chipboard - trusty cereal boxes
• Versa Colour cube - Gold
• Creative Memories gold number minis
• Ribbon
• Piece of Fancy Pants - Happy Holidays Strips
• Jolee's Boutique® Christmas Cookies Stickers
• Double sided tape
• UHU glue
• Foam tape
• Crop-a-dile BIG bite (yeah if I had one!!)

 I purpose bought a muffin tin only to find the 'cups' were too raised above the actual tray.  Also it was telfon and from everything I had read I would not have been able to paint it without a lot of preparation.  So I dug through my baking drawer and found this shallow cupcake tray.  It was a silver one, so had a bit of rust and residual grease on it so I just scrubbed it up and got all the bits off it and took it outside and spray painted it!!

My ideal pan would have been the 24 mini muffin pan but I could not get one in town.  I will be keeping my eye out for these as I would love to teach this as a class next year.

My magnets came courtesy of my lovely friend Sue.  They were actually magnetic picture frames with a solid, removable inside.  I only used the inside as the frames are still on my fridge.

I simply measured each hole and cut 12 x 7cm squares from the magnet.  Did the same with the Patterned Paper.  The magnets actually had a glossy picture on them so I tore this off leaving a rough white papery surface.  I thought this would be better to adhere to.

I uhu'd the paper to the magents and sanded off the edges.  I then used my corner rounder to round the corners.  I inked the edges with my gold cube (I just do this to everything at the moment - LOL)

I cut circles out of my cereal boxes and paper off cuts.  Actually, this whole project was made with off cuts.

I glued the circles together, sanded and gold inked the edges.

I then did something I would not ordinarily do.  Without a great deal of thought I started to attach the stickers. The embellishments are a really cute Jolee's pack - Jolee's Boutique® Christmas Cookies Stickers.  I think they are simply adorable and just 'make' this.  I popped the circles with foam tape and stuck on the numbers.

For the top and bottom I cut two strips of cereal box twice as wide as I needed.  I then scored it through the middle so it actually overlaps the edge.  I have also cut a slit along the score line to thread the ribbon through.

This is stuck down very insecurely with double sided tape and foam tape.  Now, if I had a Big Bite....I would have put a couple of eyelets in it to keep it all secure.

I have wrapped some sheer red ribbon around the top and bottom to finish off.

The final step is to fill with your treats.  I chose M&M's but you could put in stickers, tasks or toys.

I think when I make these again I will put a picture inside the muffin hole, maybe counting down or write a Christmas task on it.

I hope this inspires you to make one of these.  If you do I would love to see it.  Now to keep Jerremy away from it till the 12th!!

Jilly :) xx