Hi, and welcome to my (Dan) take on this week’s “Holiday Countdown” challenge! When I saw this theme I was immediately focused on some kind of Advent calendar – after all, it’s got the holiday countdown built right in. In the end, I decided to make a basket of goodies for a friend, with one item to open on each day in December in the run up to Christmas

The basket I used came from a dollar store (or pound shop as we call them here in the UK) and I used gesso to paint it white. Although this is what I ended up with, I did a lot of playing around on the way, trying different things, mainly to try to produce something that looked good but wouldn’t take too much time. After all, there are 24 items to make, no small undertaking! I talk about that process and take a closer look at what I did in this video.

These are the two samples I made using recycled packaging. Much as I love them, particularly the one on the left, where I turned the box inside out and stamped on it, I felt it was taking too long to make each one.

I moved on to Christmas crackers next, I think they look so cute, embellished with the Tim Holtz toy soldier die! Having said that, they were too small for most of the gifts I planned to give so it was on to the next idea.

Here are some gift tags I made to illustrate how versatile the toy soldier die can be if you think a little outside the box.

Tim Holtz’s pillow box die was the solution I finally settled on, and I think it was the perfect choice. They’re quick to assemble and look great with even the simplest of decoration, a necessity when you’ve got a lot of items to produce. Even better, the die can be used again and again, year after year, not just for Advent but for wedding favours or other gifts. I unified the look across all the boxes by using papers from the Merriment collection.

Notice that you can join two boxes together for larger items, the card sleeve around the box hides the join. Now all I have to do is hope that my friend doesn’t read this post ahead of time – at least I didn’t reveal anything about the contents of each box! Whatever you make for this week’s challenge, I hope you get as much fun out of it as I did making mine, and good luck in the prize draw!

I love this project idea, and all of the tips and tricks that Dan shared with us. Love the video most especially because it is so nice to hear the voice behind all the amazing creations!

Speaking of amazing – now it’s your turn! Join us in this week’s challenge! For the full rules, read the “challenge rules” posted in the side-bar here on our blog, and be sure to enter the challenge in the post below this one.