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.

 

 

Christmas / Yule 2018: Who Needs to Buy Presents When You Can Make Them? - Part 2

Part 2 of this tale is everything else I made while taking little breaks from working on Darth Vader (because my eyes can only take so much black thread ... don't laugh ... when you see the other projects, you'll understand).

I made a wolf silhouette skyline piece for our friend, Chris. I know he likes wolves, and we live in Minnesota. The night-time winter skyline called to me.

I actually started on this one before DV. I hadn't done any cross-stitch in years, and I wanted a smaller project to start with. It is not super complex, but I think the simplicity really is part of its beauty. I love how it turned out, and I wouldn't want to change anything about it. I am particularly pleased with the matting choice. I think the bright cobalt blue really makes the blues in the stitching pop. Clean, simple, beautiful.




The next item isn't technically a Yule gift, but I wanted to include it here. And it's my blog ... so I am. Two of our friends, Cass and Torrey, moved into a new house, and we finally got to go visit them at

the end of the summer. I wanted to make something special for them, and they are both big fans of Zelda. That's what inspired me to do this piece. I so wanted to do one of the big map pieces, but I was afraid to jump into a project that large with a shorter timeline. I have never cross-stitched any word art before, but I would definitely do another in this style.

Framing and matting was the hardest decision for this piece. I knew right away I wanted to do a simple, black poster-style frame. I have used a similar frame on several of my artwork pieces, and I really like that it doesn't compete with the art. I wanted the outer mat to a charcoal gray or a little lighter to bring out some of the variations of silver and gray in the weapon and shield. I just couldn't find an inner mat that I really liked. It also looked kind of squashed. I decided to play with it and cut out two vertical mat pieces to create the borders on the right and left sides. I think it turned out nicely. I like how it accentuates the length of the cross-stitch piece and brings out the lighter grays/silvers in the stitch-work. Cass and Torrey both seemed to like it, so that made me very happy.

The next piece is NOT a cross-stitch. My friend Tami loves the Disney Villains, especially Ursula, so I wanted to make her something featuring the villains we all love to hate (or hate to love?). It's cold and blustery here a lot of the time. I wanted to make her something cozy that would be just for her. No blanket or shareable. One of the pattern groups I am a member of (Stitch Upon a Time) posted a hooded poncho pattern last fall, and I fell in love with it for this project. It has POCKETS! I wanted it to be warm but not too warm, so I opted for cotton on the outside and polar fleece on the inside. I scouted out the fabric selection that Joann's released around Halloween and kept an eye on it hoping against hope that it wouldn't disappear before Black Friday. And it didn't! They still had one bolt of the villains print that I had in mind when I went shopping on Black Friday. So, I snagged it along with some lime green fleece and set to work. To the left is Tami modeling it because I forgot to snag a picture before gifting it for Yule. Doesn't it look great?! I just love it.

The last item was for my wife. Steffie very rarely asks for anything handmade, so when she does, I
make sure to make it a priority. When I was first learning to knit, she asked for a hat like one her mom made for her as a kid. Her requirement was that it be able to stand up on its own. I think I almost broke my fingers knitting that hat (and did break a few knitting needles during the process). She loves it though and wears it on puppy walks during the winter. It keeps her head nice and toasty even when it's windy.

I was showing her some fun crocheted items on Pinterest right around the holidays, and we saw a fun Grinch scarf that she really liked. She wanted it winter colors (white, blue, silver) instead of red so that it would not be as Christmasy. I couldn't find the pattern anywhere. I found out later the creator had to pull it because of copyright issues even though she was offering it for free. I looked at a lot of pictures, went and bought some yarn, and thought, what the heck ... I'd give it a try on my own. I'd never done any C2C (corner to corner) crocheting before, which is what the original pattern was. I watched about ten YouTube videos on how to do it and set to work. Once I got the hang of how the C2C worked, it went really quickly. I found some free snowflake patterns on the Red Heart yarn site and added those to break up the blue. Getting the eyebrows and eyes just right were probably the hardest part. I am very happy with how the finished piece turned out, and it looks so nice with her hat that stands up.