DIY Advent Calendar

With it being the holiday season, I decided to make my daughter an Advent Calendar.  I went with a more modern one than one with any religious overtones.  I also wanted a reusable one instead of a cheap store bought one.

First thing was a trip to the hobby store where I picked up my materials:

12"x12"x1/8" plywood
2  6"x12"x1/8" plywood
A book of Christmas themed 12"x12" cardstock
Green Spray paint
Wood glue
"Elmers" white glue

First step was to cut the 6" boards into 6 equal 12" long slats each so you have 12 appx 1" long slats.   It is more important for them to be the same width than to be 1".

Now, make a small sharpee mark off appx every 2" on one of the slats in addition to one on each end.  Once again, it is more important for there to be 6 equal sections instead of exactly 2".

Clamp all of the slats together.

I used a dremel to cut halfway down all of the slats at each mark.  The last "flag" on each slat is extraneous so it may be cut off, but ensure that the notch that you just cut is still there.  This will leave you with 12 inter-lockable slats.  I did a little dry fitting and I had to re-dremmel a few of them to get everything to work great.

Should look like this.

Add just enough wood glue to each notch and fit them all together; six notch up, vertically; six notch down, horizontally; to make a nice 5x5 grid.  I rigged up a couple of scrap pieces of wood so that everything would dry up nice and even.

While that was drying, I had my daughter help me pick out the background paper and spread some Elmers on the 12x12 board. After the glue was applied I put the paper on it and put a book on top of it all.

Next step was to get the doors cut.  I picked a good cardstock and placed it face down.  I placed the dried grid on top of it centered.  I spray painted the grid which left a negative image of the grid.

I took a perforating tool and perforated each square from the back.  Once everything was perforated I glued the grid into place.  Since we cut off one of the "flags" on each slat, that left a bit of "door paper" on each end that could be folded down to cover the wood on the outside of the grid.

Had my daughter pick out some candies to fit in the grid and had her place them in. (Tip: kids will stuff as much as they can into each compartment.)

Once everything was full, I glued the grid down to the backboard, centered of course.

Here is the result:

She had a super fun time helping me and she is looking forward to December. (Tomorrow)

Next year all I'll have to do is strip off the red door paper and re-glue a new piece down.