Christmas Advent | Joyful Collection | Michelle Stokes

Hey Everyone! It’s Michelle here today and a Happy Festive season to you all. I hope you’re having an enjoyable month and aren’t as stressed out an unprepared as I am. Our Elf only made her appearance for these photos, and has since disappeared again lol. As you can see I’ve created something a little different, a fun little Christmas Advent ‘Calendar’ (aka completely forgot to buy one from the shops) using the sweet Joyful Collection. We’ve set it up in Leila’s smaller Christmas as the pastel colours suited a white tree background.

As soon as I saw the Advent Paper in this collection I just knew I needed to create something using it, and what a perfect way to do so by creating a hanging “Advent calendar”. Each pocket was made using all the different pattern papers from the A5 paper stack and decorated using ephemera pieces, accessory stickers and fussy cut florals from the ‘Tis the Season‘ Paper in both 12×12 & A5 sizes. Oh and of course, numbered using the ‘Advent’ paper which only comes in the 12×12 size.

Here’ how the pockets look hanging from the tree…

You’ll see in these close ups I’ve cut the tops of each pocket in different ways, attached the string randomly and also added some white cardstock stars and the cute gold puffy stars. The paper chain was made a couple years back using the bohemian Dream collection

As the tree has so much decoration we left all other decorations off and only added the Santa llama and angel on top.

All the empty pockets are left either at the bottom of the tree, or in a little basket I’ve sat next to the elf house to the left of the tree.

Heres a closer look at all of the different pockets, they’re all so cute I cant pick which ones are my favourite.

I kept all pockets roughly 4 inch tall and 2.5 wide to ensure we could fit full size Freddo Frogs, Caramello Koalas and theres even a mini Chomp bar here and there. Love us come Cadbury Favourites here YUM!

Each pocket is folded over at the back and adhered along the bottom edge using a stapler as the tape adhesive wouldn’t stay shut once the chocolates were inside. You could also sew along the bottom edge for a little extra detail on the pocket.

Embellishments are layered using different forms of adhesive, from regular double sided roller tape to foam for a little extra dimension. Although once the chocolate is inside the entire pocket pops with dimension/.

The cute hand-drawn animals in this collection are just so sweet, and easy to use on these little pockets of chocolatey goodness.

And thats the lot. I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing something a little different from me this time around? Let me know in the comments below if you enjoy seeing different crafty ideas other than layouts, or are you purely a layout crafter like I usually am?

Thanks so much for stopping by, I’ll be back in a couple weeks to share my last creation for 2021, although I’m still unsure what it might be.

Until then, have a safe and HAPPY Festive season, which ever way you celebrate. Stay safe, enjoy and Happy Scrapping!
Michelle x