Holiday Craft: Advent Calendar Tins

You know that moment in the crafting world when the idea you had in your head works perfectly? You know how it NEVER happens. Well it did. I made it happen.

Last year my mom ordered the kids some pre-filled advent calendars off of Amazon. While they were a lot of fun, the parts were tiny and some days not so expensive. Plus, those suckers are not cheap.

When I went looking for similar calendars for this year, I was pretty underwhelmed at the selection. I decided to find a different solution so I wasn't spending a ton of money every year.

I had recently picked up some magnetic spice tins from Fred Meyer and I got an idea. Why couldn't I buy 24 of them and make an Advent calendar?

Holiday Craft: Advent Calendar Tins

You'll need:

24 magnetic spice tins
A cookie sheet large enough to hold them all
2" print to edge labels (depends on how big your tins are) 24-48 depending on how you tackle the project

It's actually pretty easy. The biggest challenge was making all the numbers. But even that wasn't so bad. I downloaded the template for the labels from the Avery website and figured out the proportions for ONE label and made a template in PicMonkey.

Then I individually made each number label and uploaded it into my template. It was a little time consuming, but well worth it.

I printed out the labels and carefully put them on top of the clear window on my tins. they overlapped just a tiny bit because the window is concaved, but it's not super noticeable.

After I printed out all of my numbers I started a new template and wrote out  activities for Christmas that the kids and I could do. This is everything from eating a candy cane, to having a picnic by the tree to putting out cookies for Santa! Super fun right?

I put those labels on the inside of the tins, easy peasy.

I figured on some days, in addition to the activity, I'd put some candy or small toys for fun.

All 24 fit nicely on a cookie sheet. Now, I will say I need to figure out how to hang my cookie sheet since there is no hole in it (like a bunch of the others I have) so the tins may go on my refrigerator for now until I find a new sheet. The good news is? I no longer will be buying those crazy prefilled calendars!

Here's what you need to make your own Advent Calendar Tins:

Originally shared November 2013

Does your family have an Advent calendar?