Advent Calendar – Humble Home. This is week 8 of my Christmas Series for 2024. Every year I scratch my head as to how to create an advent calendar. From the moment I saw Ithe Humble Home Bundle on the front cover of the September -December 2024 mini I knew that it would be just the ticket! This bundle is paired with a punch instead of dies and you’ll find it on page 46.
I created 4 house designs for the front of the boxes using the Humble Home bundle. The box base on which the punched out house is adhered to can contain a single chocolate/sweet. What better way to display them than on a 3-tier cake stand!
Additional supplies
In addition to the Humble Home stamp set, I used the candy cane and also the gingerbread man from the More than Autumn stamp set. The numbers were die cut from a retired Playful Alphabet dies set. Unfortunately the Alphabet a la Mode dies are too big for the house, so if you don’t have numbers small enough, simply punch out/die cut a small circle and write the numbers in your own hand to adhere to the back of the box.
House Designs
There are 4 house front designs. I tried to keep them simple because you have to make multiples of each design i.e., 6 each of each design.
Real Red Gold Embossed
- Stamp and Gold emboss the house on Real Red card stock and also gold emboss another on Basic White card.
- Punch Real Red houses with Humble Home Builder punch.
- Colour the gold embossed door on the Basic White piece with Crumb Cake Stampin’ Blends combo and the window cills in Real Red and the window panes with Daffodil Delight.
- Fussy cut all the doors and windows, attach mini dimensionals on the back and adhere to house fronts.
- Assemble the box by adhering flap first (see picture), then the house on the panel where the lid is.
- Lastly, adhere the bottom of the box to form the base – the two side flaps first, then the back flap with the finger hole, and finally the front flap where the house is.
Old Olive Brick House with wreath
- Stamp the brick facade in Crumb Cake and the roof in Old Olive.
- Punch stamped house with Humble Home Builder punch.
- On Basic White card stock use the door and window stamp to stamp 6 images in Old Olive. Fussy cut the door only and attach mini dimensionals to the back.
- Next stamp 6 in Daffodil Delight on a narrow strip of Basic White and punch the windows out with the Humble Home Builder punch. Attach mini dimensionals to the back of each window i.e., 6 pairs totalling 12 windows and adhere to either side of door on each of the punched out houses.
- Stamp 6 wreaths in Tuxedo Black Memento ink. Colour bow in Real Red and the wreath in Old Olive Stampin’ Blends. Fussy cut and attach mini dimensionals to back and adhere to door.
- Punch 6 hearts from a strip of Real Red card stock. Attach dimensionals to the back and adhere to eaves of house.
- Repeat process as for the Real Red gold embossed house – refer to picture.
Gingerbread house with More than Autumn candy cane and peppermint candy
I used the gingerbread and candy cane stamp from the More Than Autumn stamp set which also has coordinating dies.
- Stamp and white emboss house, gingerbread man, on Crumb Cake card stock and the Candy Cane in Tuxedo Black Memento ink on Basic White card stock.
- Use Real Red Stampin’ Blends to colour the house, gingerbread man and candy cane. Die cut the gingerbread man and candy cane with corresponding dies from More Than Autumn Dies.
- Punch embossed house with the Humble Home builder punch and adhere candy cane and gingerbread man to embossed house with dimensionals.
- Adhere punched gingerbread house to front of the box on the panel where the lid panel is as pictured for the Real Red gold embossed house.
- Next assemble box by adhering the side. panels first, the back panel where the finger hole is and lastly the panel at the front.
Pool Party Brick facade with door bow
- Stamp brick wall facade in Crumb Cake on Basic White card stock and punch out with Humble Home Builder punch.
- Partially punch roof from Pool Party card stock and include a bit of facade as well as the heart. Align centre at the highest pitch of roof and cut a slot as pictured above. This is a guideline so you can cut parallel to each gable for the roof only.
- Attach mini dimensionals as shown, align with stamped piece and adhere to house front.
- On Basic White card stock, stamp the wreath in Tuxedo Black Memento ink and colour the bow with Real Red Stampin’ Blends combo.
- Fussy cut bow along black lines.Colour the bow with Real Red stampin’ blends combo and fussy cut bow.
- Stamp 6 window and doors in Daffodil Delight and 6 of the same in Pool Party.
- Fussy cut the doors in Pool Party and adhere to house front.
- Align windows in Humble Home Builder punch and punch out 6 pairs of windows. Adhere these to the house front on either side of door with mini dimensionals.
- Lastly adhere front of house to box base. Repeat for remaining 5 houses.
Playful Alphabet (retired) using the number dies
Once the houses have been completed, attach the numbers. I arranged the 4 designs according to their colours and repeated the order till the 24th box, then numbered them 1 to 4 and repeated it with consecutive numbers till the end.
Here’s my worksheet for die cutting the numbers for each box and some tips on how to take the heat out of die cutting all those numbers! Tip: only cut as much foil to die cut the numbers each time it passes through the die cutting machine. Any marks on the cutting plates will show on the foil.
- Use an adhesive sheet on the back of 2″ (5 cm) gold foil.
- I arranged the numbers as pictured above and used Glad’s Press and Seal to keep them together so I could lift them off in one clean sweep twice.
- Remove the numbers which you’ve already die cut 2 of then re-arrange the remaining numbers which you need 3 of i.e., numbers 3 and 4 and run it through the die cutting machine.
- You need 13 of the number 1 and 8 of number 2. Remove all the numbers you don’t require and continue die cutting.
- On my work sheet, I crossed off each marker as I went along to keep track.
- On the back of the foil, I stuck low tack tape so that the numbers would stay in place until needed.
How to construct box template
Here’s a short video on how to construct the box template. On a desktop, you can view the video by clicking the “play” arrow as normal but If you’re on a mobile device click HERE.
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Product List
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