Jo and I love Advent calendars, and usually try to come up with something new each year. She shared her new mini cupcake Advent calendar idea with you yesterday, and today I’d like to show you a fun calendar we designed using lottery tickets. This is one my favorite projects we’ve done in a long time!

To make this calendar, I started with 24 Christmas-themed lottery tickets — one for each day of December until Christmas. We found some with really cute characters on them, and chose the rest of the supplies to coordinate with the colors. For the backdrop of the calendar, I got a big piece of light blue felt off the bolt at the fabric store. I got 2/3 of a yard, but could have gotten by with a bit less, it turns out. I also grabbed some white felt, some red satin ribbon, some self-adhesive felt letters, and some matching felt snowflakes (Creatology brand from Michael’s).

The first step was to determine how wide my felt needed to be in order to fit two tickets side by side, with a snowflake next to each one. I laid them out on the felt with a yardstick and decided that 17″ would work great. I cut the felt into a long piece that was 17″ wide.

To create a pocket to hang the calendar by, I folded over the top edge about 2 inches and then sewed it down with a row of zigzag stitches. Jo insisted I use red thread, which looked really cute and matched the ribbon I was going to add later.

Then I used my white felt letters to add a title to the top of the felt. The famous “Ho Ho Ho” combined with the possibility of a cash windfall equals “Ho Ho Dough”!

I put my two sample tickets and snowflakes back on the blue felt, and lined them up next to the letters so they were just how I wanted. Then I took two long pieces of red ribbon and lay them on top, centering them over the tickets. I pinned each ribbon in place to hold it for now.

With the ribbon secure, I removed the tickets and snowflakes and folded the top edge of each ribbon under, to hide the rough edge. I used a little hot glue to secure the ribbon to itself and then to the felt. Then I slid two lottery tickets back up under the ribbon, scooting them up as far as they would go.

I put another dab of hot glue under the ribbon as far up as I could without getting it on the ticket. I did this on both sides, creating a nice tight pocket to hold the ticket. Then I added two more tickets and glued the ribbon down after them again. Isn’t this a clever way to make sure the pockets are perfectly fitted without having to measure?

I continued down the ribbon, adding tickets in pairs, until all 24 of them were affixed.

When I got to the bottom, I left a few inches of the ribbon hanging down, and then covered the ends and the bottom of the blue felt with some white felt that I cut to look like a snow drift.

A quick run of the scissors across the bottom and the extra blue felt was trimmed off perfectly.

The tickets were all attached, but they didn’t have numbers to correspond to the countdown, so I grabbed those self-adhesive snowflakes. I put one next to each ticket, alternating between the two snowflake sizes that came in the pack. Oh my goodness, this thing was getting so cute!

I used some tiny red glitter stickers to add a number to each snowflake.

Isn’t this the cutest thing?

To hang the calendar, I grabbed a wooden dowel rod and cut it a couple inches longer than the blue felt is wide. I put a tiny eye screw in each end and then attached some of the red ribbon to each end.

The finished calendar looks so amazing hanging on the door. I can’t wait until December 1st so I can start scratching one ticket each day. I’ve already promised both my niece and Little Jo that they can scratch the ticket whenever they come over. I don’t normally buy lottery tickets, but this sure seems like a fun way to count down to Christmas this year!