Every day of advent I will be posting a page from my coloring book for you to download. On the second day of advent you get a string of lights to color. Do you have lights up yet? Time to get out those crayons and pencils. Click here to download the page!
If you are extra proud of your work feel free to show it off in the elsie marley flickr page.
happy december! Every day of advent I will be posting a page from my coloring book for you to download. On the first day of advent you get a fancy dancy pair of knit mittens to color. So get out those crayons and pencils and click here to download the page!
If you are extra proud of your work feel free to show it off in the elsie marley flickr page.
I am super excited to tell you about this project. After much help from my computer genius of a husband, you can now buy (for the super cheap price of $2.50) and download my Advent Calendar Coloring Book. Then check “make advent calendar” off your list. Done and done. All the pictures were drawn by yours truly and I had a fine time doing it. We all should draw more often. And color more often too! Because of course after making a coloring book, I had to break out the crayons and pencils and color!
My daughter, who is my little tester, has colored three whole books already and advent hasn’t even begun. And really, you could print out a coloring book a day for advent, instead of coloring one picture a day. My kids are coloring fiends, so that much coloring wouldn’t be unheard of. And of course you don’t have to use it as an advent calendar, but just color all the christmasiness to get in a happy holiday mood.
And as a special treat, I am going to have a page to print out and color everyday for advent on my blog. So be sure to stop by tomorrow for the first one!
Here it is, the string of lights advent calendar tutorial (and pattern!). I made the pdf pattern file all by myself for the first time, so if you have problems with it just email me and I’ll try to fix it. Otherwise, hurry up! because advent is almost over!
materials
green wool felt
multi-color felt scraps
60 feet green yarn
green embroidery thread
lightweight treats (gum balls, dum dums, love notes, tiny ornaments)
pattern
directions
Cut the yarn into six equal pieces (10 feet each or 120 inches each or about 3 meters each). Take three pieces and braid them together. This is more difficult then it sounds, but if you roll up the slack and just work with a little yarn at a time it’s much easier. Braid the other three together the same way. Then twist the two braids together and knot the ends. It will stay twisted when you sew the lights to it.
Cut out 25 (or 24 or however many lights you want) circles and rectangles. Create the socket by sewing a blanket stitch to the edge of rectangle and the circle attaching them to each other. If the rectangle is slightly longer than the circumference of the circle clip it to fit and continue sewing the ends of the rectangle together. Sew the sockets onto the cord–one every three inches.
Cut out the light bulb pattern piece. To sew the lights up faster you can fold your colored felt over and simply trace the pattern onto it with a marker (permanent or not it doesn’t matter) then sew the two pieces together staying inside the lines. To be safe test the first light to see if it fits: sew and turn out, put a treat or two inside, then fit it inside the socket and see if it stays when it’s hanging upside down. If it slips out, just make the lights slightly bigger. If you’d rather use the lights for decoration and not for treats you can stuff the light bulbs lightly and sew them onto the socket.
I didn’t really finish the ends of the cord (I just tied a knot on both ends). But it would be sweet to make a little plug out of felt to hide the knot. To do this cut out four extra “socket bottom” circles and two extra rectangles. Cut a slit in the middle of one of the circles and insert your knot, then attach the rectangle, just like you did for all the sockets, and attach the other circle to the other side–making a round (European style) plug. You can even make some prongs out of felt to complete the look.
Ta da! The advent calendar is done, well pretty much done. It’s a string of chirstmas lights. One of you guessed correctly! But there were some good ideas out there: an advent abacus, a ferris wheel. Next year. There are only twenty lights, but I figure I’ll save some making for next christmas or add them if I have time this month (ha!). There are treats in the bulbs and the lights fit in their little sockets, but they aren’t held in by anything–just the power of felt. This calendar is for lightweight treats only or bits of paper with sugarless activities on them. I went with candy because my kids are still young enough to think it’s the best thing in the universe.
I’d be happy to write up a quick tutorial (with patterns) if there are a lot of you that would like to make one. It’s not difficult at all. The hand sewing is a little time consuming, but it’s nothing a few movies won’t fix. If you sewed the bulbs on it would make a nice Christmas decoration for this year (or next). If you’d like to see more pictures of it you can click here and here. And there are lots more fantastic calendars here and here.
