Retro Santa Advent Calendar

by: Jo

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I challenged Chica to a crafting duel this year, and we both created an Advent calendar out of the same blank chipboard box. She made a Charlie Brown Christmas Advent calendar, and I created my Advent calendar with a retro vibe, using lots of vintage Santa Claus images.

We both started with a 25-compartment papier mâché box, which we picked up at our local craft store. (Also available here on Amazon.) This would be the perfect blank slate for us both to work from.

I started by painting everything that would show with Americana Multi-Surface paint in a bold red called Lipstick.

To decorate the drawers, I had to find a bunch of Santa images. I just did an online image search for "retro Santa" and found a ton I liked. I scaled them down to fit the size of the boxes, and printed them out. To make it easier to cut them all to the right shape, I made a template of the front of the box and used that to trace around each image.

I used Decou-Page medium to adhere the images to the box fronts, and then brushed on another coat over the paper to seal and protect it. (You'll notice that I didn't bother painting the fronts of the boxes since the images would be covering them anyway.)

I used some small glitter stickers to number the boxes with 1 through 25.

As a finishing touch, I hot-glued some white faux fur ribbon to the two sides and the top. I kept the bottom plain so that the box would still stand up straight.