Pocket Advent Calendar

  
(Dear Reader: Please be sure to credit "My Little Mochi" and link back to this post if you are going to share this project on your blog or website. It's been a little disheartening to see gum advent calendars on so many blogs without crediting where the original idea came from. -Aloha, My Little Mochi) 

Over the past few weeks I've been thinking about what kind of advent calendar I should do for Buddy this year. I wanted to do something different from the snowman origami ones I've done over the last couple of years. So I created these pocket ones which were really fun and so fast to make that I  think I'm going to make a bunch more for friends and family.

I came up with the two different versions pictured above. I made the red one in a "book" style. Here's the inside, can you guess what it is?

 

It's an advent calendar that counts down with gum! You remove the gum packs from the cardboard sleeves and pop open a gum a day until Christmas. Here's what the gum packs look like on the foil side.

I bought two Dentyne Ice gum packages that come with 12 pieces of gum a piece. First I removed the foil blister packs from the cardboard sleeve and traced the sleeve onto cardstock after carefully taking it apart along the seam. I cut out two sleeves (for the book style one) and glued the two sleeves onto another piece of cardstock and used a tiny circle of sticky back velcro on the inside as a closure. For the countdown numbers I just used red and green Sharpie pens to add the numbers onto the foil side of the blister packs.

For the green polka dot one, I made one sleeve, but doubled the width of the spine to hold two blister packs. I tested the tightness of the sleeve before gluing the seam to make sure it was tight enough that the blister packs wouldn't fall out.

There were many different brands of gum to choose from at the store that come with 12 pieces in foil blister packs and they all seem to use the same size sleeve and blister packs. I like the Dentyne Ice ones because of the little peek-a-boo cut out on the sleeve that was perfect for adding a snowman face with Sharpie pens.  The snowman is piece number 23 so that it's one of the last ones eaten. And now I'm thinking I should add buttons to the piece below for a body or maybe even draw some branch arms too?

I'm not a scrapbooker or stamper so I didn't have too many supplies on hand and just printed my wording on the computer, but you could use stamps, stickers or even Christmas tags to decorate them instead. And you could also print the countdown numbers onto stickers instead of using Sharpies.

Like I said, I'm not a scrapbooker and I'm sure there's a lot of ways your could really jazz these up, but I'm still very happy with how they came out. Now I just need to start working on Christmas gifts...

Comments

[Jane Swanson]

Oh! I wish I'd seen these earlier! You.Are.So.Creative!
Filing this away for next year!!
~jane

[kerry lynn]

cute cute cute!!
xo

[jennie]

oh, i LOVE your calendar! :)

[Anne Marie]

What an amazing idea! :-)

[Mina Nakamura]

I´ve done my advent calendar this year but I´m sure I´ll make this pretty one the next year, thanks for the fun idea!!!

[Patty.cakes of Columbus, GA]

These are the cutest things--think I will have to try them. I also enjoyed talking with you.

[Carrie]

Love love love this!!!! Definitely on my to do list for next year! I am an advent calendar junkie....my son too =)

[dianne shiozaki]

So cute! I love your creativity! My daughter loves gum, so I might have to do this next year!

[hediye]

Cool gifts : )

[julie nesbit]

I LOVED this idea when I saw it Mid-December, but of course I figured it was too late to use it. However, my kid loves a countdown for anything. I'm going to make a Valentine's version with just 1 sleeve (12 pieces). Thanks for such a great idea!

[Monica]

This is one of the cutest ideas yet

[Melody Law]

Oh I love this idea... thank you.. So darn cute and so diffrent..

[simone]

Hi, thanks for sharing this tutorial. I linked to it and the picture. Hope you don't mind.

[Evangeline]

I am about a year behind the times with this post, but I made about a dozen of these yesterday to be mailed out to the guests coming to our house for Christmas. They are so cute, and such a great idea! Thanks.

[catrriiiiiiiiiiiiiana]

OMG!
I should make this for my mummy!
Oh... but with panadol. She ALWAYS has a headache.

[debbie]

Love this (a year later!). I'm actually going to make them for the 12 days of Christmas (doing one 12 pack) since our family exchanges gifts on Epiphany. Can't wait to see how they come out! Thanks for the idea!

[Rose fr FineCraftGuild dot com]

10 out of 10!

[Bethany]

GREAT IDEA!!!! I love it. Thank you for sharing!

[Norah Brown]

Thank you for the fun idea! I made these for everyone I could think of who might want one (and more than a few people who might not).
I'm not a scrapbooker either, but Fiskars holds warehouse sales in town so I have some random things I thought I could find a use for. Thanks to you I did!

[Meganx]

omg this is really awesome!

[Lenine Starforest]

That's genius

[Trina Knudsen]

Such a cute idea! I will have to do these for my nieces and nephew as soon as they are old enough to chew gum!

[Veronica Hugger]

This is so stinkin' cute!

[Kristin]

I love this. SO much fun and adorable, too!

[Andrea]

I love these!! And I think my son will LOVE it more. I am going to try it out and make them for my boys friends or cousins if they really are as easy as you say :)