12 New Year advent calendar ideas to delight children and adults!

Advent calendar is a calendar that counts down the days until Christmas or New Year. For each day there is a pleasant surprise that puts you in a festive mood. We suggest making such a calendar with your own hands. It will be a great gift not only for children, but also for adults!

DIY Advent calendar for the New Year - it's easy

Advent calendars abroad are an integral attribute of the holiday. In Europe, they count down the days until the main European holiday - Catholic Christmas. It is celebrated on December 25th. In about a month or two, all well-known toy, cosmetics, and chocolate companies produce holiday posters, Advent boxes and tablets.

They also sell empty packs with dates for you to fill yourself. Photos of Ikea Advent houses:

For reference, Advent is the name of the pre-Christmas period.

The Advent calendar is a good and beautiful tradition that energizes you with the Christmas spirit. On the other hand, it pushes people towards mindless consumerism. Therefore, many families prefer to make holiday posters with their own hands. This not only saves money, but also allows you to fully experience the magic of your special day.

When making an Advent calendar with your own hands, you can choose any content - from chocolate bears to perfume samples, New Year's poems and tasks.

Thousands of people around the world devote the November days to creating holiday attributes. For the most part, these are simple crafts - envelopes, socks, hung by clothespins with numbers. Try making your own advent calendar and see for yourself how easy it is!

Advent Calendar Ideas

When choosing which advent calendar to make for the New Year, you need to take into account your abilities. Craftswomen who are comfortable with a needle and thread can easily sew a reusable poster from felt. Those who like to design should pay attention to colorful houses made of cardboard. For those who are good at handicrafts, there are a lot of simple but original ideas with gift bags, socks, mittens, balloons...

You don't have to make a 31-day advent calendar. You can make a weekly version with changeable dates.

From cardboard tubes

A toilet paper (paper towel) roll is a ready-made container for a surprise. You just need to make the bushings colorful and assemble them into a single composition. For example, a winter house or a Christmas tree. Photo:

From balloons

A simple but very bright balloon advent calendar can be made in just half an hour.To do this you will need small bright balls and double-sided tape (rope). It is better to take balloons that are as strong as possible so that they do not burst or deflate ahead of time.

• We push a surprise inside each balloon and inflate it.
• Glue or draw numbers on top.
• We tie it to a rope and hang it with a garland. Or you can attach the balls to the wall with double-sided tape, laying out the Christmas tree.

From matchboxes

You can't put a big surprise in such a calendar. But it is very compact and easy to manufacture:

• We cover the boxes with beautiful wrapping paper for gifts.
• Draw or paste numbers.
• Place it in a glass vase or glue it onto thick cardboard, laying out a New Year's figure.

From envelopes

You can buy New Year's envelopes at the post office, or you can make them yourself from colored paper. Cute notes with wishes, poems, tasks (for example, watch a New Year's film or go to the forest) will fit inside. You can insert themed photo cards and postcards, coupons with wishes, etc.

From paper cones

If you have a fireplace, an empty chest of drawers or a shelf, this advent calendar idea will come in handy. Roll cones out of paper and glue numbers on them. And put surprises underneath them.

Take not plain paper, but colored or with pictures. You can decorate the cones with beads and tinsel.

From paper cups

Cups are great for storing small surprises. For a festive look, you can decorate them with deer faces.

1. Cut out horns from colored paper according to the template.
2. Glue toy eyes and a cardboard round spout onto each cup.
3. Cut the red satin ribbon for the handles into 15 cm pieces.
4. Attach the ribbons with a stapler.
5. Hang the cups on a line using numbered clothespins.

From paper bags

Packages can be customized to suit any size surprise. We glue numbers with dates on them and pin them to a board (piece of plywood).

Or you can hang the bags by strings from the trempel. Like this:

From socks and mittens

Truly amazing, truly New Year's advent calendar. But buying 16 pairs of socks with New Year's designs can be expensive. On the other hand, they are just enough for the winter for a family of 3-4 people.

As an option, you can sew socks and mittens using felt templates. Or glue them together from paper. But then you can’t put a serious surprise inside - the paper will tear.

From cardboard boxes

You can use cardboard to create an advent calendar. Boxes from it can be small, large, colored, white. If you glue New Year's figures or snowflakes on top, it will turn out very festive.

You can also print out the house templates on thick paper. All that remains is to cut them out and glue them together.

From felt

Felt advent calendars are not only beautiful, but also durable and good quality. From felt you can sew a Christmas tree base and ball pockets for New Year's tasks.

Or you can make separate cells for surprises or sew felt boots. Photo:

From tin cans

If you've been collecting tin cans but never found a use for them, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The time for jars has come:

1. Draw large numbers on the jars with a marker.
2. Cut out mugs from packaging foil for each jar (1.5-2 times larger than the diameter of the neck).
3. Secure the foil with rubber bands. You get both the lid and the decoration – 2in1.
4. Build a tower of cans somewhere near the Christmas tree.

From everything that is at hand

If you're tired of making monotonous containers for surprises, don't despair.Place gifts and tasks in different packages and hang them on ribbons of different lengths from a figured stick. It looks very good!

Filling the advent calendar

A win-win option is sweets. Small chocolates, candy bars, candies, M&M’s, and gingerbread cookies will delight not only children, but also adults with a sweet tooth. The calendar can be filled with sweets alone or mixed with small gifts.

You should choose surprises based on the person’s hobbies.

Ideas for filling the advent calendar:

• New Year's toys;
• tasks;
• cosmetics: eye shadow, lipstick, lip balm;
• mini perfume;
• keychain;
• shaving accessories;
• tickets to cinema, theater, circus;
• bubble;
• hand towel with a New Year's pattern;
• warm socks, mittens;
• hair ornament;
• bijouterie;
• gold ring, earrings;
• plasticine, a set of pencils, felt-tip pens;
• diary;
• small bottle of whiskey;
• Tackle for fishing;
• brooch, reflective badge;
• card with wishes.

DIY Advent calendar with tasks

The calendar can consist of only tasks or be mixed. Various instructions are written on small cards and pieces of paper and inserted into departments (pockets, envelopes, jars, etc.). In order for an advent calendar with tasks to create a festive mood, they must be New Year's. For example:

• Sing the song “A Christmas tree was born in the forest.”
• Bake gingerbread cookies.
• Decorate a Christmas tree.
• Make your own Christmas tree decoration.
• Go sledding.
• To make a snowman.
• Write a letter to Santa Claus.
• Go to the winter forest.
• Decorate the windows.
• Fill the skating rink or ice slide in the yard.
• Watch a New Year's movie.

Hint: for adults you can look at the tasks in the game “New Year's forfeits”.

Templates to help you make your own advent calendar

To save time, we suggest using a selection of templates. You can print them or redraw them from your monitor screen.

Deer:

Herringbone:

Template with tasks for each day:

New Year's toys:

Envelopes:

Boxes:

New Year's house:

New Year's boot template:

Step-by-step master classes

Using a detailed step-by-step guide, you can make any, even the most complex, Advent calendar with your own hands. We offer two options to choose from: a Christmas tree made from bushings and a house with felt pockets.

Advent calendar made from toilet paper rolls

For the craft you will need:

• 16 cardboard toilet paper rolls;
• stationery knife;
• scissors;
• ruler;
• a simple pencil;
• red, green and brown gouache;
• 4 sheets of green paper and 1 sheet of brown;
• marker;
• glitter glue;
• hot glue.

Progress:

1. We cut 15 bushings crosswise with a stationery knife (divide in half).
2. We lay out the “herringbone” in the following order: 1 bushing on top, 2 bushings in the next row, and so on up to 7 bushings in a row. The last row is a barrel with 2 bushings in the middle. Total 30 cells.
3. We make a star: we draw the sleeve into 5 rings 1.5 cm wide. Cut it out, flatten it a little and lay it out as a star.
4. Paint the star red, and after drying, glue it with hot glue.
5. We paint the “trunk” brown, and the “needles” green (outer side). When the paint dries, glue the Christmas tree together.
6. Glue together two green sheets of paper and apply a Christmas tree diagonally. Trace, cut out. Glue it to the back.
7. In the same way we seal the back of the “trunk” with brown paper.
8. We take the remaining sleeve, apply it to colored paper and trace it.You should get 28 green circles and 2 brown ones. We cut out circles with a margin of 2 mm.
9. We number from 1 to 30. Glue to the cells in front (only to the top).
10. We attach a small circle with the number 31 to the star. We decorate the advent calendar with glitter glue.

DIY felt advent calendar

Necessary materials:

• 2 sheets of felt A2 (beige and white);
• 4 sheets of A4 felt (red, light green, green, white);
• glitter foamiran A4 (silver and green);
• snowflake sequins;
• glue gun;
• zigzag ribbon;
• felt numbers;
• cord, needle and thread.

How to make a felt advent calendar step by step:

1. Cut out 30 squares of 7 by 7 cm from 4 sheets of A4 felt. Glue zigzag tape to one of the edges.
2. Glue the numbers from 1 to 30.
3. We cut out the roof of the house from white felt, and icicles and a heart from foamiran. Glue a beige sheet on top. We also glue a white strip 15 cm wide at the bottom. We decorate the roof of the house with sequins.
4. We cut out a large pocket from green foamiran and glue it on the bottom. Glue the number 31 and a Christmas tree from the same foamiran.
5. We glue pockets with numbers.
6. Sew a loop of cord and hang it on the wall.

Questions and answers

When is the right time to make an advent calendar?

It is usually made in the last week of November. But you can make a calendar much later. For example, a week before the New Year or even after it, on Christmas Day.

How long will it take to make the craft?

From half an hour to several days. It all depends on the complexity of the advent calendar and your own speed of work.

Making your own advent calendar is fun and completely easy. The craft will delight children and adults every day until the New Year. The effort will pay off in spades!