Gum Advent Calendar

Sorry to recycle an old post, but this project is always popular this time of year so I thought I'd re-post for those who might have missed it.

If you're looking for a quick and inexpensive gift that you and can make and give in multiples - how about an Advent Calendar made from packs of gum!

 

(Dear Reader: Please be sure to credit "My Little Mochi" and link back to this post if you're going to share this project on your blog or website. It's okay to link to posts, but please don't republish my tutorial on another site. This includes reposting the entire tutorial in pictures on Pinterest. It's been a little disheartening to see gum advent calendars on so many sites 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

[kat]

happy holidays!

[debbie gish]

I love this idea. I did this for my kids the last two years for the 12 days of Christmas (we open presents at Epiphany) with a three kings theme. They love it.