i surprised my children this morning with a little holiday craftiness... an advent garland. i have been planning this for a while now, but if you know me, you know that means i didn't do one bit of work on it until last night. i tend to plan things out in my brain forever, but put off the actual work until necessary. luckily, it was a pretty easy project (that doesn't mean it wasn't a late night though). it is made from simple bags with a solid front and patterned back. the solid color is stamped with a number, and the bag holds a treat for each day. once it has been emptied, the bag is turned from the number side to the patterned side... making a pretty garland!
i should have gotten this together and posted it last week as a tutorial, but if you are interested, here are the basics...
gather your materials. i used mostly scraps i already have for the backing pieces, along with some inexpensive dish towels i had bought from ikea. i also use material from ikea for the red colored solid side... they are actually red curtains they had on sale for hardly anything! you can buy fabric or be clever with recycling what you already have. i cut my squares to be 5 1/2 inches squares, to make it easy to match up front and back.
then, i simply folded the top edge of each square down slightly, pinned it and sewed across the top to make a neat edge (i only folded once to make it easy). i then pinned two squares together, right sides facing in and sewed around the edge...
once the edge is sewn up, you simply turn them inside out and you have a bag (you could make yours drawstring if you want to get fancier;)...
i then stamped each one with number stamps i purchased, using a permanent ink pen (martha stewart) to make it neater, instead of a stamp pad...
then it's just a matter of hanging some clothes line, and using some clothes pins to hang them up...
and of course filling them with goodies for your little ones (mine share a bag each day that has two treats in it, including mini candy canes, chocolate coins and chocolate santas for christmas eve)!
i told you it was easy!
... look for mushroom ornaments in the shop later today, and more goodies as the week goes on.
1 comment:
my dear friend...feels like it's been so long. i LOVE your advent garland. oh, what can this non-christmas celebrating girl do with this idea. birthday week maybe? half-birthday celebration week (never done that one before). sure there are endless ideas, just can't think of them at the early hour of 10:24. as always, your writing is beautiful. love to read what you are up to, feels like we jsut caught up. dena
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