Home-made advent calendar

I always think it is quite interesting to see how people come up with ideas, what thought-process they go through, how things change along the way. A couple of weeks ago I started thinking about making an advent calendar for this year. As much as I enjoyed making last year's one, I'm not keen on all that paper being wasted. Best to make something which could be used year after year. That's when the concept drawing was born:

Interested in seeing the finished article? Drumroll please.....

Here we go! What do you think? Only space for little chocolates and small notes. We've gone for jokes this year... Anyway, back to the calendar. I used a square wooden board for backing, some natural linen for the background, some green yarn for the outline of the Christmas tree, brown felt squares to create a little pocket for each day, some gold beads to create the numbers. Some red embroidery thread was used to fix the squares in place, and a variety of buttons were used to embellish the tree.

It has taken centre stage on the chimney breast from now on, replacing the autumn wreath. Christmas is on its way!!!