2023 Advent Calendar Adventures

We always get together with our friends for a joint Yule and Christmas celebration. We hang out in our pj's or other comfy clothes, have a potluck of soups or order take-out, and exchange gifts with each other. We try to make the holiday as low stress as possible because we all know how stressful family get-togethers during the holidays can be. No one wants to add to that.

This year for our gifts, my wife had the idea to make each person an advent calendar. She actually brought the idea to me last year, but at that time, we didn't have enough time to pull it all together. So, we reserved the idea for this year keeping in mind that all calendars needed to be completed before Thanksgiving in order to be able to gift them to everyone before the start of December.

Let me just begin with, we had no idea what we were getting into.

We spent a couple of months looking for design ideas for each of our friends that suited them specifically. I found a lot of the patterns/instructions on Etsy and was able to purchase the cut files for my Silhouette Cameo. I was not well versed in using the paper cutting machine at the start, and now I am extremely experienced with it. Once the patterns were decided on, there came the task of finding suitable decorative papers and cardstocks for each project. It was fun but also a big task. It took a while to sort.

Then, the cutting and construction began...

1) Baldur's Gate III Video Game Sleeve Advent Calendar

The first advent calendar we started on was a Baldur's Gate III inspired calendar made to look like the game packaging from the outside and like a bookshelf on the inside filled with books holding each advent item. They each had titles of books actually found in the video game itself. The larger drawers at the bottom are supposed to represent the crates you can smash for loot in the game, and I 3D printed a potion bottle dice holder to represent the urns and vases that are often on the bookshelves and in the rooms.

                       

2) Baldur's Gate III Double Library Advent Calendar

We also made an expanded version of the Baldur's Gate III themed advent calendar that looked like a wardrobe cabinet from the outside and revealed a library within full of books from the video game.

3) Bag of Holding Advent Calendar

We made a Bag of Holding Advent Calendar by making boxes in the shapes of polyhedral dice (used when playing Dungeons and Dragons and other D20 based role play games. The recipient also crochets, so we found a nice craft bag to use as the holder for the advent dice.

4) Princess Castle

For our friends daughter, we made a pink princess castle. The hardest part about this one was finding fun kid items that fit in the tiny boxes. I was particularly pleased with the pack of scrapbook papers I found in all shades and patterns of pink.

5) Beer Barrel Advent Calendar

A lot of our advent items and calendars were themed toward gaming things. We have one friend who does not game, but he does like to spend quite a bit of free time in the summer at our local Renaissance Faire. And he likes to bake. We combined those two things and printed and painted a cookie jar in the shape of a wooden barrel to be the calendar storage. We wrapped individual advent items and placed them inside.

6) Water Dragon Advent Calendar

Another friend really loves dragons and I found a pattern for a super cute dragon advent calendar on Etsy. She also (as dragons do) loves sparkly things, so I chose glitter scrapbook paper in various shades of blue and green for the dragon scales. I giggle every time I look at his dragon face. It's probably my favorite of the calendars.

7) Witchy Library Advent Calendar

One of our friends shares my interests in both gaming and metaphysical things. She also, like my wife and I both, has a love of reading and books. I made her a wardrobe library similar to what I mentioned above except I chose mystical and witch related scrapbook papers to decorate the books so that they looked like old leather bound mystical tomes I really loved the papers I was able to find for hers. She has pet snakes, and I was even able to find some with a snakeskin pattern and others with a drawing of the snake.

8 and 9) Medieval Castle Advent Calendars 

For two of our other friends, we made medieval style castles (one red, one blue). D8 (8 sided dice) boxes held each day's advent items. I put 1 inch grids on the castle ramparts and in the center section of the castles so they could actually be used with miniatures to play D&D.

 

 

Monster Stockings: The Dragon Foot

I've been making different monster themed stockings for a while now, and this past Christmas one of the new ones that I made was a dragon foot monster stocking.

I found this awesome, metallic silver snakeskin fabric at Hancock Fabrics and was inspired to make something with it. It ended up looking great, but the fabric was really problematic because it frayed quite a bit as I worked with it. The hang tab and claws are made out of black felt. I also made a lining of black felt as well to give it shape because the silver fabric was very limp and didn't hang very well on its own. I stuffed the claws and the toes with recycled cotton batting that came out of some old pillows that I keep around for just that purpose. Here is how it turned out when it was finished.

No two of my monster stockings are exactly the same, but I do have a basic pattern that I began with.  I used the Bare Foot Christmas Stocking pattern from the Disney Family Fun website and made some adjustments to it. Instead of cutting out all four toes, I used the edge of the toes as a guideline to make more of a webbed-toe look. I then took away the cuff and added on the claws for a rawrrr look. I think it turned out pretty well.

I posted a picture of this one on my Facebook page after it was completed and one of my high school friends said he wanted one too. I swear there was a whole bolt of this fabric two weeks before that, but when I went back for more there was none at all and no one remembered seeing it ever. I checked around at all of the fabric stores in the area, and no one had anything even similar. 

That was in December. While I was traveling in Iowa just a couple of weeks ago for a renaissance festival I found some even better snakeskin / dragon scale fabric. It was at Hancock Fabrics in Ankeny, Iowa. The fabric is a black, stretch knit with red metallic snakeskin print on it. Since it's a knit, I didn't have the awful fraying issue that I had with the silver fabric before. Also, what really adds a nice pop to this fabric is that the surface is scaled with tiny clear squares of a plasticy material that creates an awesome scaled look and feel.  I will give a heads up if you find any of this fabric and decide to use it. Sewing through the plastic scale material gummed up my sewing machine needle after a while, and every now and then the needle would just slide across a scale rather than through it, which caused a few skipped stitches that had to be fixed later.

Rather than do the webbed toes on this one like the silver one, I took the original pattern and connected toes two-three and toes four-five together to form three big toes. I made the claws more conical in shape. The claws, the pull tab, and the cuff were made from black pvc material purchased from Joann Fabrics. I lined it the same way as the first one with black felt and stuffed the claws and toes to fill them out more. Here is a picture of the red one.

I'll be posting up more of my stockings probably closer to the holiday time to share how I made those. So far I have in my repertoire a ballerina, monster ballerina, high heeled boot, victorian boot, pirate boot, ice skate, furred monster,  wolf, fox, mouse with cheese (for my kitty Buster), and elf stocking.