Christmas Countdown Calendar Tutorial

First off a big thank you to Amy Sheffer for allowing me to create a tutorial of her fabulous countdown calendar! I got my inspiration from her creation here.

Ok so on with it. You'll first want to gather some supplies:

• 2 4" square costers
• Pattern paper (2-3 coordinating patterns)
• Cardstock
• Alphabet stamps or stickers
• Number stamps or stickers
• 12" ribbon
• Decorative scissors/dieCircle punch
• Crop-a-dile
• Plastic coil (if you don't have this, check a local Children's Museum for a recycle store or wire from your craft stash will work as well)

Cut 4 pieces of pattern paper 4" square, apply adhesive and adhere to the front and back of your coasters.

After you adhere your paper to the coaters you'll nee to round the corners.

Next you'll punch a circle and stamp "Days Unitl Christmas".

Here's mine (sorry a bit blurry) as I am not fortunate enough to have a JustRite stamper like Amy, but I was able to make due with stamps in my collection. :)

Next you'll cut a strip of paper about 4"x 1" creating a decorative edge on one side. Here I used a Nestability to create a scalloped edge.

You'll also cut a piece of paper 4" x 1.5". You'll adhere this piece, the decorative edge piece from above and your 12" piece of ribbon. Top this off with your "Days Until Christmas" circle.

Next you'll cut 1"x 1.5" pieces of cardstock or paper for your calendar. For this calendar I choose 0-3 & 0-9 for my numbers. I used a snow flake stamp with Close to My Heart Daisy White (THE best white ink ever!) and number stickers from my stash.

Now the fun part! You'll place about .25" of your coaster under a ruler and mark off every .25". This will create the guides for punching holes for the plastic coil.

After you punch holes in the first coaster use this as a template for the second coaster as well as your numbers.

After you get your coasters and numbers punched it's time to bind. Be sure you have your numbers in the correct order before binding!

Here's the finished product with one final step. So the coasters don't collapse on each other cut a .5" x 3" strip of cardstock, score .5" from both ends, adhere .5" on the back coaster, slip the other .5" behind the ribbon. (If you adhered your ribbon already, don't worry. Take an exacto knife under the ribbon to lossen the adhesive and slip in the other scored end.)

My daughter gets a kick every day out of changing the date. Just so we're sure to get the right count I bookmarked this site. She checks it every day and thinks she's big stuff for using the computer!